Biomedical engineering
Engineering a revolution in Global Health
A quiet revolution is unfolding across Africa; one that challenges the outdated notion that medical innovation, and supplies of equipment, must always flow from the ‘Global North’ to the ‘Global South’. The biomedical engineering community is key to helping address inequities in global healthcare. In this article, on behalf of the IMechE, a team of experts in biomedical engineering look at how the international biomedical engineering community can help.
On 7 April, the World Health Organization celebrated its 77th anniversary. The occasion was marked as part of World Health Day, which draws attention to a different global health priority each year. In 2025, the focus is on improving maternal and newborn health with the Healthy beginnings, hopeful futures campaign.1 Despite recent attention and progress, driven by the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the global situation is stark, highlighting huge disparities in outcomes worldwide. For example, every two minutes a woman dies during pregnancy or childbirth and about 70% of these occur in sub-Saharan Africa.2 This dire situation is echoed across
other areas of healthcare, from access to surgery and vaccines to delivery of essential respiratory care. In this article, we argue that the biomedical engineering community is key to helping address these inequities in global healthcare, and furthermore that the response must be international, with representation from each country, for any response to be truly effective and sustainable. In particular, we focus on the African continent, which while facing a disproportionate health burden, is also showing how local expertise in medical engineering and medical technology innovation is a vital and
Figure 1. Undergraduate students with their tutors from Makerere University’s Biomedical Engineering Department take part in a workshop, learning how to assemble and quality check the LeVe CPAP device.
necessary solution. The WHO recognises that medical (and biomedical) engineers are essential in developing, supporting, assessing3
and regulating medical devices and technology.4
Most health technologies currently used in Africa are imported, typically from high-income countries, and are often inappropriate for use in the African context. This results in healthcare technology graveyards littered with broken or unusable equipment, wastage of valuable resources and the fast deterioration of healthcare facilities.
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www.clinicalservicesjournal.com I June 2025
Accordingly, a core WHO strategic priority is to “ensure improved access, quality and use of medical products and technologies.”5
This
aligns with the UN health SDGs to delivering a sustainable, cost-effective, and self-sufficient healthcare system across the globe to improve individual and population health. The WHO also highlight the importance of supporting regional capacity in biomedical engineering6
through
education, training and certification, supported and overseen by Professional Associations. While a number of International Professional
Associations exist (e.g. IEEE), it remains important to have regional Professional Associations that can tailor their offering to the needs and context of the local community. Here, there is significant disparity worldwide and the need to build capacity in ‘low-income’ regions; for example, Europe has 50 registered
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