Breath of life as project supplies oxygen to fight pneumonia

The Hewa Tele oxygen plant at Siaya County hospital. The region is among areas that record high pneumonia deaths. [Photo: Collins Oduor/ Standard]

The persistent cough of her one-and-a-half year old son Mathew had been hidden as a seasonal flu. But Dr Tabitha Mwangi, a lecturer at Pwani University, missed signs of pneumonia, a disease rated as top killer of children under five years in East Africa.

“He was not himself. I imagined before that a child with pneumonia would be coughing and spluttering and doing something dramatic but he was not,” says Dr Mwangi.