How can ministries buy oxygen equipment spare parts centrally?

A pooled purchasing pilot

From April to December 2023, PATH and its partners piloted a centralised procurement mechanism for the service kits of one brand of oxygen compressor, to give more efficient and timely access to spare parts for oxygen generation plant components. The mechanism aggregated demand across low- and middle-income countries and met it through advance purchases of service kits; the pilot evaluated whether and how consolidating demand can ease access to spare parts for oxygen compressors, in support of the broader objectives of the Unitaid-led ACT-A Oxygen Emergency Taskforce. During the pilot, the cost of the kits and their logistics was covered by PATH through a Unitaid-funded grant to the Clinton Health Access Initiative. PATH reports that one biomedical team repaired two oxygen compressors with kits from the mechanism and another began building a spare parts inventory for its plant.

Why spare parts are hard to buy one facility at a time

PATH's analysis of PSA plant failures (November 2023) found that facilities can struggle to identify the right suppliers and to order parts in the correct technical language, while suppliers receive one-off orders with high transaction costs, and fragmented demand leads them to produce parts to order; the result is delays of three months to a year in getting spare parts, or no access at all. It recommends that ministries of health consider coordinating or aggregating spare parts purchasing across regions to obtain more favourable purchasing conditions, and that plant suppliers develop spare parts stockpiles where appropriate. A 2021 PATH and CHAI brief on respiratory care business models likewise calls for aggregating demand for respiratory care equipment across health facilities.

Holding and ordering parts

Global Fund guidance on spare parts (25 September 2025) describes three common ways of managing them, which may be combined in practice:

• On-site storage at the hospital that runs the plant.
• Centralised storage, where a central entity such as the ministry of health keeps the parts, for example in a central medical store, and distributes them to facilities as needed for scheduled maintenance.
• Supplier-managed storage, where the supplier keeps custody of parts the owner has bought and brings them to preventive maintenance visits; in the guidance's example, an owner buys five years of parts, keeps one year on site and leaves four with the supplier.

The same guidance says it is common to buy several years of spare parts in each procurement cycle, that lead times range from several weeks to several months, that orders should quote the machine's serial number, and that parts should be bought only from the manufacturer or an authorised distributor, since parts from unauthorised suppliers may void the warranty. A Global Fund management course for ministry of health leaders (April 2025) can include a module on bringing oxygen spare parts and consumables into digital supply chain and maintenance management systems.

Setting it up in the plant tender

In UNDP procurement, REQ-OXY-001 (effective 1 January 2025) requires spare part kits to be available throughout the plant's lifespan, listed with part numbers, descriptions, quantities, brand or model and, where applicable, expiry dates, and asks country offices to work with end users on a reliable supply chain for spare parts and consumables. WHO's Technical specifications for health facility based medical oxygen systems (31 December 2024) ask the vendor to list all spares for at least the first 16 000 hours of operation and for spare parts to remain available for at least 10 years from acceptance. Which parts a plant should keep is covered in what spare parts a PSA plant should keep.

Ultra Controlo

Ultra Controlo supplies original spare parts for its systems through UltraCare, its technical assistance programme of preventive and corrective maintenance and emergency support.