Home Funded Projects ARISE-Uganda: a respiratory study that reshaped national oxygen policy
Achieving Sustainable Health
ARISE-Uganda: a respiratory study that reshaped national oxygen policy
A respiratory-failure trial whose findings fed directly into Uganda's National Medical Oxygen Scale-up Plan 2023–2027.
With barely one ICU bed per million people, this trial asked whether simple, low-cost breathing support could save lives — and ended up reshaping national oxygen policy.
The challenge
Death from acute hypoxemic respiratory failure is devastatingly high in Uganda — one study found 77% in-patient mortality at the national referral hospital, even with clinicians following the guidelines.
Only a tiny fraction of these patients reach intensive care: the country has roughly one ICU bed per million people. Low-cost breathing support had never been rigorously tested in this setting.
The approach
ARISE-Uganda was designed as a multi-centre, randomised, controlled trial — using an innovative stepped-wedge design — to test whether two techniques that need no ICU or specialist anaesthetist (CPAP by mask, and high-flow oxygen by nasal cannula) could lower mortality in adults with acute respiratory failure.
Equipment was placed at study sites to remain in service afterwards, and frontline health workers were trained to use it.
The study's data fed a new National Medical Oxygen Scale-up Plan for 2023–2027.
Results & impact
Beyond the clinical question, the study's data were taken up by the Ministry of Health — used for surveillance of severe acute respiratory infections and to map the country's oxygen needs.
That work fed directly into a new five-year National Medical Oxygen Scale-up Plan (2023–2027), and the project lead was invited to help lead it.
This research was funded by the Government of Uganda through the Makerere University Research and Innovations Fund — one of a growing directory of projects turning national investment into real-world results.
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