Abstract
While health technology has shown constant improvements in industrialized countries, developing countries have not been able to take full advantage of this evolution, partly because of unstable power supplies. According to a World Health Organization study, grid failures are responsible for one-third of medical device breakdowns. Therefore, the global slogan “Health for All in the Third Millennium” requires a reliable and sustainable electricity supply in hospitals. This paper presents a power backup and electricity stabilization system that takes into account the technical constraints, as well as the socioeconomic factors, impacting the electricity supply in Cameroonian hospitals. The implementation of technological solutions has to be adapted to the socio-institutional context of the hospital. Preliminary sociological studies highlight the impact of organizational culture, hierarchy, and professional education on the way that technical equipment is installed and maintained, as well as the way that supply failures are addressed. From an economic perspective, technical weaknesses imply higher energy costs and lower revenues. Preliminary studies suggest that the costs incurred in the installation and maintenance of a stable electric system can partly be compensated through energy saving and additional medical treatments resulting from the increased availability of medical devices. The problem tree analysis method (PTAM) used in this paper allows the identification of interactions between technical and socioeconomic factors leading to electricity breakdown and, hence, to the development of more holistic solutions for the supply of electricity to hospitals. Because of its multi-dimensional nature, this project actively involves scholars from the North and South who are specialized in engineering, social and political sciences, and management.
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Notes
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- 3.
Dr. Beat Stoll worked for many years in Cameroonian hospitals and is, among others, the Chief Medical Officer of the EssentialMed Foundation (http://www.essentialmed.org).
- 4.
See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninterruptible_power_supply for an introduction.
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The specific solution was developed based on work by the “Distributed Electrical System Laboratory” (see http://desl-pwrs.epfl.ch).
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Acknowledgments
This work was conducted by the Université de Lausanne (UNIL), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and Ecole Nationale Supérieure Polytechnique de Yaoundé (ENSPY). The authors are grateful for the facilities offered to them in these universities. We thank the Cooperation & Development Centre (CODEV) and the Network of Excellence in Engineering Sciences for the French-speaking Community (RESCIF) for their ideas and for having agreed to supervise the research tasks regarding the reinforcing of primary healthcare systems in Southern countries with a reliable and sustainable electricity supply and with appropriate equipment. Part of the work was further realized thanks to the funding granted by the joint EPFL-UNIL CROSS program. Finally, the authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their very constructive remarks that allowed us to improve the quality of the final manuscript.
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Ngounou, G.M., Gonin, M., Gachet, N., Crettenand, N. (2015). Holistic Approach to Sufficient, Reliable, and Efficient Electricity Supply in Hospitals of Developing Countries: Cameroon Case Study. In: Hostettler, S., Gadgil, A., Hazboun, E. (eds) Sustainable Access to Energy in the Global South. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20209-9_6
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