Powering Health
Electrification Options for Developing Country Health Facilities
Powering Health Topics
Learn about a wide range of topics related to electrification options for health facilities and meeting energy needs of health clinics in developing countries.
Blood Banks and Blood Safety
Key strategies for blood safety include ensuring consistent electricity and refrigeration to maintain blood supplies at blood banks.
Cold Chain and Refrigeration
Health facilities in developing countrie need to maintain the cold chains to ensure that critical medicines, vaccines and supplies can reach those in need.
Energy Efficiency
Incorporating energy efficiency measures for health facilities will help to reduce future challenges associated with off-grid clinics or those with unreliable grid power supply.
Energy Management
Energy management is as much about human behavior and management as it is about technology. The actions of your staff will have a major impact on the amount of energy your health center consumes. In many instances, energy equipment and supply decisions may occur outside the health care facility. For example, a national government agency or donor may provide a diesel or solar system to meet the needs of a rural facility, often without input from you or your clinic staff. Energy use and management decisions, on the other hand, take place at the facility level, and therefore the long-term success of the energy system is one of your responsibilities.
Design and Installation
Proper system design and installation are the first steps required for sustainable on-site health facility energy systems. Off-grid energy system design is quite complex and should typically be done by a trained professional. This page does not attempt to teach the user how to do a design and installation, but rather covers some general principles and lessons learned.
Information and Communications Technology
Health improvements for poor and vulnerable people play a critical role for achieving the development goals especially in the emerging economies. Among other enabling factors, significant advances in the information and communication technologies (ICTs) over the past few decades can be employed to improve the effectiveness of the delivery of heath services for remote clinics in the developing world.
Laboratory Infrastructure
Reliable energy supply is vital to the successful operation of laboratory infrastructure at health facilities. Intermittent power limits laboratory operating hours while poor quality power quickly destroys sensitive laboratory equipment and compromises the integrity of sensitive lab results. This section examines the specific energy related challenges and solutions for laboratories.
Load Calculations
A basic electric load assessment involves creating a table showing power ratings of all electrical devices in the facility along with an estimate of the number of hours each device will operate on a daily basis. This results in an assessment of the watt-hours used by the facility per day, which is used to assess the size of the energy system needed. Here are a range of sample health facilities as well as energy consumption estimates for commonly used equipment.
Manitenance Logs and Checklists
Maintenance logs and task checklists should be maintained for all on-site energy supply equipment.
Standards and Technical Specifications
Properly drafted specifications and standards can allow each energy system to be tailored to meet the needs of the facility while still ensuring best practice design and installation protocols are followed.
Sterilizations, Sanitation and Waste Management
Issues related to medical waste management and disinfection are described here.
Technical Drawings
The schematics provide technical installation drawings for inverter/battery power backup systems at health clinics in Haiti.
Technology Options
Health facilities have a number of technology options available to supply reliable electricity, including Photovoltaic (PV), Wind, Reciprocating Engines (generators), Hybrid Systems, and Grid Extension.
Theft Prevention
High value technology in developing countries is an automatic target for theft. Several techniques have proven effective in mitigating the likelihood of system theft including full-time guards, anti-theft mounting systems and cages, and proper system maintenance.
Water Pumping
Clean water is an essential input for proper health facility operation. Electrification of health facilities provides an excellent opportunity to pump clean water to the facility.
Wiring
The wiring in developing country health facilities is often in terrible shape and represents a major obstacle which must be addressed in order to improve the power supply to the facility. It is not uncommon for a facility to double or triple their electrical loads with no associated upgrade of the facility's wiring.
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Last updated: September 28, 2011
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