Health-tech: From Oxygen to Blood. LifeBank’s Temie Giwa-Tubosun, helping save lives one bike, boat, drone at a time

Ingenuity and innovation are the combined driving force helping Nigeria’s LifeBank save lives and stand out in the field of medical tech companies in Africa. And Temie Giwa-Tubosun (pictured above), the driving force behind it, has just announced yet another major milestone from her health-tech company.

Temi founded LifeBank, a medical logistics company that uses data and technology to deliver critical medical supplies – Blood, oxygen, platelets, plasma, medical samples, vaccines and rare medicines – in the ‘right condition and on time.’

And now, the company has gone one further announcing that the launch of LifeBank’s first oxygen plant – AirCo by LifeBank in Orozo, Nasarawa State, Nigeria (above). A mega milestone as COVID-19, one of the most challenging pandemics of our time, continues to wreak havoc.

“For me and the entire LifeBank team, it became imperative that we use our innovation and technical expertise to solve the supply chain for oxygen once and for all,” says Temi explaining one of the motivations that drive her passion, adding:

“Some years ago, I read the story of Dr Rosemary Chukwudebelu, Head of Internal Medicine, Kogi State Specialist Hospital in Lokoja. She was one of the few highly specialized and experienced health workers who believed in Nigeria and stayed back to serve her people. She got ill in 2018, and died because the hospital where she worked and was treated could not find oxygen on time, when they eventually did, they couldn’t get the required tool to access the oxygen.”

In fact, Pre-covid, she explains, 625,000 Nigerians lost their lives annually due to lack of access to oxygen supply.

“AirCo is a smart plant, and it has the capacity to produce 700 m3 of oxygen every single day using a predictive production system that improves precision. This is the first of its kind and we are just getting started.” She says

“Every Breath Counts”: AirBank during COVID-19

LifeBank’s AirCo comes on the heels of AirBank, a utility the resourceful entrepreneur launched at the onset of the pandemic when she saw how the paucity and lack of access to medical oxygen, a key essential in mitigating and combating the effects of COVID-19, was costing lives.

“Medical oxygen therapy became the most commonly utilised therapy in the management of the COVID-19 virus. Provision of emergency medical oxygen in optimum condition is critical to save lives and prevent irreversible damage to the health of COVID-19 patients,” Temie said, explaining what inspired her to come up with AirBank, the on-demand emergency medical oxygen delivery service, which would prove essential in meeting the increased demand for oxygen in the country. It has since become one of the quickest, most convenient, and cost-effective way to order medical oxygen in cylinders in the country, in response to the COVID-19.

Supplying Blood, Saving Lives

“At Lifebank, we like to say we are in the business of saving lives,” says Temi, who was inspired in 2014, when she had her son, an experience she has described as “complicated and harrowing,” and the stories of other Nigerian women who faced postpartum haemorrhage, a leading cause of maternal mortality, especially in developing nations due to lack of readily available blood supplies.

Operational in two countries, Nigeria and Kenya, it has transported upwards of 26,000 products, served over 600 hospitals and saved more than 10,000 lives. In 2019, Lifebank partnered with Google in order to integrate Google maps into its mobile application, to help with the seamless mapping of locations in order to enable and accelerate better connectivity between its dispatch riders, blood banks, hospitals and health centres. 

The reality of Africa’s famed gridlock traffic in cities like Lagos and Nairobi, means LifeBank dispatch riders use any means necessary – bikes, boats and drones to deliver to ‘urban, peri-urban and rural areas.’

Deservedly, Giwa-Tubosun was one of our New African Women of the year 2020, the Africa Laureate of the 2020 Cartier Women’s Initiative, and LifeBank is the recipient  of the inaugural Africa’s Business Heroes award by The Africa Netpreneur Prize Initiative (ANPI.)

But irrespective of accolades, Giwa-Tubuson is on an ambitious mission to improve access to blood, medical oxygen and other medical supplies on the continent.

“Our vision is to be the supply chain engine for healthcare systems across Africa and save the lives of 1 million Africans in the next 10 years,” one bike or boat ride or drone flight at a time.