Our Areas of Work

Essential Medical Equipment

Providing health networks with essential equipment that can increase efficiency and enable health care workers to deliver better care.

Around 40% of health facilities in low-income and developing countries lack essential medical devices, with significant variation based on geography, equipment type, and hospital size. Of the equipment available, up to 40% is often out of service due to insufficient infrastructure, skills, maintenance, and spare parts.

The Essential Medical Equipment program addresses these challenges by supplying crucial equipment and maintenance support to improve service accessibility, efficiency, and the ability of healthcare workers to provide quality care. This initiative has been supported by the DAK Foundation (now DAK International Network) since 2008.

The Equipment

We supply a select range of essential health technologies designed for resource-limited settings, including bedside ultrasounds, oxygen concentrators, vital signs monitors, oximeters, and simple ECG machines. Our core range consists of 12 lifesaving items, each crucial when used effectively at the right time.

We source new, durable, and compact devices from verified suppliers, prioritizing equipment that uses minimal or no consumables. Each device is configured with rechargeable batteries and includes spare parts where feasible. Through ongoing consultation with healthcare workers, biomedical technicians, manufacturers, and supply chain experts we ensure the suitability of the selected models for their specific contexts.

By purchasing in bulk and directly from manufacturers at discounted rates, we maintain a streamlined range but can support health networks at a larger scale. Equipment is consolidated and shipped from Sydney or China, and we provide comprehensive documentation to assist our partners with customs clearance in the receiving countries.

Partners

We collaborate with health networks and leverage existing capacities to maximize impact. Since 2018, we’ve partnered with Lifenet International to equip over 150 not-for-profit health facilities in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Malawi. The program includes quarterly site visits from biomedical engineers and on-site user training, integrated with Lifenet’s clinical and management refreshers.

We leverage our extensive partner network to expand our knowledge and share insights with stakeholders in health technology management. For individual facility partnerships, we conduct baseline surveys and on-site assessments where possible to ensure equipment is necessary, can be operated by trained staff, and will positively impact the local community.

Biomedical

Supporting medical equipment throughout its full life cycle goes far beyond choosing a durable device. Biomedical engineering technicians are vital to healthcare but often under-prioritized. Our partnerships are dynamic and impactful, such as:

  • The Gould Family Foundation, which embeds technicians in hospitals to integrate best-practice biomedical programs. They mentor, manage, and provide monthly training to over 25 biomeds across 7 countries.
  • Oxygen Alliance, which aims to foster a culture of repair and maintenance across Africa. They’ve created a multidisciplinary collaborative platform that engages governments, biomedical engineers, NGOs, manufacturers, and academic institutions.

Using medical oxygen access as a starting point, they advance repair and maintenance efforts continent-wide.

Oxygen

Creating functional medical oxygen ecosystems in low-resource settings is complex and requires more than just procurement and maintenance. Our support has focused on comprehensive, impactful initiatives, including:

These efforts address critical gaps and contribute to sustainable oxygen access and care delivery.

Anaesthesia

One-third of all human diseases require surgical treatment, from lifesaving caesarean sections to managing injuries and infections. Yet, a staggering 5 out of 7 people globally lack access to safe surgery and anaesthesia.

To help close this gap, we partner with organizations such as Lifebox, Diamedica, Safe Anaesthesia Worldwide, the World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiologists, and local anaesthesia societies.

Together, we work to improve the availability and safety of surgical and anaesthesia care worldwide.

Equipment Distributed by the DAK Foundation to 2023

Click on sections of the graph below to know more about the equipment.

Our
Areas of Work

Our primary purpose is to pursue health interventions at scale in disadvantaged communities in lower income countries.

We optimise resources and leverage existing capacity to maximise the number of people we can assist.

Restorative Eye Surgery

To date 555,000 cataract surgeries funded.

There are several hundred million avoidably blind persons around the world.

Women's Health

20,000 prolapse and fistula surgeries funded.

Focusing on Birth Injury Repair and Family Planning, we provide training to doctors in both surgical and conservative prolapse management.

Family Planning

Over 500,000 CYPs provided.

Enabling women to make informed decisions about whether and when to have children reduces unintended pregnancies as well as maternal and newborn deaths.