In 2017 this tweet popped up in Michael Liebreich’s Twitter feed:​
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"Three of our oxygen-dependent babies died last night when the power went off. Not good enough in 2017. Low-cost tech e.g. affordable solar power must be a priority for saving newborn lives"
Niall Conroy, 'X' (formally Twitter) @NICU_doc_salone
20 Nov 2017
It had been sent by Dr Niall Conroy, the doctor behind a neonatal special care unit at the Bo Government Hospital in Sierra Leone. Bo is the country’s second largest city, and the Government Hospital provides care for around 660,000 people in the region.
Sierra Leone is one of the poorest countries in the world, with an annual GDP per capita of just $750. It also has one of the world’s weakest medical systems – not just because of the country’s poverty, but also because of years of conflict and the impact of Ebola.
One of the country’s biggest problems is lack of electricity. Sierra Leone’s two main power sources in 2017 were the oil-fired Kingtom Power Station and the Bumbuna hydro-electric power plant. During the long dry seasons, Bumbuna’s reservoir often runs low, leaving much of the country without power. Many clinics and hospitals in Sierra Leone have no electricity or running water.
In 2017, one in 20 babies in Sierra Leone was dying before they were one month old. Just 20 minutes without oxygen, heat and light can have fatal consequences for critically ill babies. Without electricity, it is simply impossible to deliver even basic medical care.
Having seen Dr Conroy’s tweet, Michael decided he could not look away.
He reached out to Richenda van Leeuwen, a friend from his days on the high-level group of the UN Sustainable Energy for All initiative. Together they assembled a group of supporters, raised over £100,000, found a contractor in Sierra Leone, and built a 20kW solar system, with 120kWh of batteries.
It came online in mid-2018 and had an immediate impact. In a recently-published paper in the prestigious journal Acta Paediatrica, Dr Conroy documented how mortality at the unit dropped from 22.6% in the first half of 2017 to 10.2% in 2019, despite average monthly admissions growing from 46 to 88[1].
However, the system was not reliable. Its lead-gel batteries swiftly degraded and new loads were connected without planning or coordination. The frequency of power cuts reduced, but they remained a problem. And there was no remote monitoring, so diagnosis was impossible. Then, during Covid, maintenance ceased, there were thefts, and the system went off-line. The unit turned back to diesel generators.
Over a period of 18 months, Michael and Richenda identified an alternative local contractor and began working with EKI Foundation, based in Spain but with a strong presence in Sierra Leone, to design a new system – using the old solar panels but installing new batteries and wiring. It went live in 2023 and was expanded in 2024, and that is the system you will see in the Cleaning Up episode released on Wednesday 9th April 2025 at 6pm UK.
To read the full story of the project’s conception in 2017 and the first system, please visit https://web.archive.org/web/20240427073154/https://www.projectbo.org/
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[1] Conroy et al 2024, Electrification and specialist training associated with decreased neonatal mortality and increased admissions in Sierra Leone https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/apa.17431