A doctor from Bangladesh has created a new invention that is saving the lives of thousands of children.

In 2017, 920,000 children under the age of five died of pneumonia, and most of them were in poverty-stricken areas of the country where they could not get proper medical care. Pneumonia is a major problem in Bangladesh, as the disease accounts for 28% of infant mortality.

After hearing about the statistics of last year, Dr. Mohammod Jobayer Chisti knew he had to do something. That’s why he created an artificial respirator out of a shampoo bottle as a means of getting oxygen to infants and children more easily.

Chisti’s shampoo bottle respirator is a cheaper alternative to the bubble-CPAP, a ventilator he designed to help premature babies breathe. This device channels the baby’s exhaled breath through a tube that has its far end immersed in water. This breath then comes out of the tube as bubbles, and the pressure of this will keep the tiny air sacs in the infant’s lungs open.

Since this device is so expensive, Chisti made his shampoo bottle alternative, and it worked as soon as he started testing it.

“We tested it on four or five patients at random. We saw a significant improvement within a few hours,” Chisti said.

Chisti’s hospital now uses the device all the time, and since they started using it, the number of children who die there from pneumonia has fallen by 75 percent. The doctor now plans to travel to other impoverished countries to introduce his respirator. Chisti and his team are preparing to travel to a group of hospitals in Ethiopia to introduce the device.

Chisti’s ultimate goal is for every hospital in developing nations to have one of these devices available to them.

“On that day, we can say that pneumonia-related mortality is near zero,” he said.