Subtotal £0.00
Why a hospital needs its own oxygen
We asked a hospital in Sudan to show us its oxygen plant, and were shown an empty concrete slab. This is what stood there, why a hospital cannot do without it, and how you can help put it back.
Where the hospital’s oxygen plant stood, Sudan, April 2026. The plant is sketched back from the hospital’s own photographs.
We asked to see the oxygen plant
It was April, on our team’s trip to Sudan’s Northern State, and we had asked one hospital to see its oxygen plant.
A member of staff walked us across the compound, under a canopy and past a wall, and pointed at a concrete slab with nothing on it but a bare steel frame. “This is the one that was bombed,” we were told. “So currently it’s not working.”
Next to the slab, the hospital has put up a board of its own photographs: the plant room with its tanks under a broken ceiling, and machinery among the rubble. By the board, we were told:
“Now there’s nothing left.”
Said to our team at the hospital, April 2026.
The hospital’s own photographs of its oxygen plant and the damage, on the board beside the slab.
What oxygen does in a hospital
The World Health Organization calls medical oxygen “a life-saving essential medicine with no substitution” (World Health Organization, n.d.). Much of what a hospital does depends on it.
Surgery under general anaesthesia cannot safely happen without it: oxygen feeds the anaesthesia machine that keeps a patient breathing through an operation. A newborn struggling to breathe may need it, and so may a child with severe pneumonia or someone carried in after a crash or a shelling.
The WHO cites an estimate that stronger oxygen supplies could prevent up to 122,000 deaths from childhood pneumonia a year (World Health Organization, n.d.).
Surgery runs on oxygen: our doctors with the local theatre team, Northern State, Sudan, April 2026.
However, when the oxygen runs out, none of that stops being needed.
How a plant makes oxygen from the air
Hospitals like this one get their oxygen in one of two ways. They buy it in cylinders, trucked in from outside, or they make their own.
A hospital oxygen plant makes oxygen out of the air around it. It draws the air in, dries and cleans it, then pushes it under pressure through tanks of zeolite, a mineral that holds on to nitrogen and lets oxygen through. When the zeolite is full, the pressure drops, the nitrogen is let go and the tank starts again.
What comes out is about 93% oxygen, piped to the wards or filled into the hospital’s own cylinders (PATH and Clinton Health Access Initiative, 2021).
FROM THE AIR TO THE WARDS
-
1
Air in The plant draws in the air around the hospital.
-
2
Dried and cleaned Water and impurities come out.
-
3
Through the zeolite Under pressure, it holds the nitrogen back and lets oxygen through.
-
4
Oxygen out About 93%, piped to the wards or filled into cylinders.
How a hospital oxygen plant works (PATH and Clinton Health Access Initiative, 2021).
A working oxygen plant at a hospital in Sudan, 2026.
A plant needs power and looking after, but it does not depend on a convoy for each day’s oxygen. Without a plant, a hospital waits for cylinders to be driven across a country at war. As a result, when the road closes, the operations stop.
What the war has taken
Sudan’s hospitals have been hit again and again. Between April 2023 and April 2026 the WHO verified 217 attacks on health care in Sudan, which killed 2,052 people.
It says 37% of the country’s health facilities are not working, and that in conflict areas hospitals are only partly working or have closed, because their buildings and equipment were destroyed (World Health Organization, 2026).
So when our doctors went to Sudan’s Northern State in April, they did not only operate. They bought equipment and consumables for a hospital there. As it left, Dr Nadeem Ahmad, one of our trustees, said on camera: “This equipment we have purchased now is heading to the hospital.”
Equipment on its way to the hospital, Northern State, Sudan, April 2026.
After two weeks our doctors went home. However, the equipment stayed.
Putting the plant back
An oxygen plant is the same idea as that equipment, at the size of a whole hospital. Put one back, and with power and upkeep it makes oxygen every day, for the patients who need it, long after our team has gone home. That is what makes it a Sadaqah Jariyah: it keeps giving after the giving is done.
We are raising the money to put this hospital’s plant back, through our Sudan Oxygen Plant Project
Operations, struggling newborns and children with severe pneumonia at that hospital all depend on it. Give towards the plant, and send this to one person who would want to know where their Sadaqah goes.
References
-
PATH and Clinton Health Access Initiative (2021) Oxygen generation and storage: pressure/vacuum swing adsorption plant. July. Available at: media.path.org (Accessed: 15 October 2026).
-
World Health Organization (n.d.) Oxygen. Available at: who.int (Accessed: 15 October 2026).
-
World Health Organization (2026) After three years of conflict, Sudan faces a deeper health crisis. News release, 14 April. Geneva: WHO. Available at: who.int (Accessed: 15 October 2026).
