When the Lights go out on Science: A Personal Reflection on Months of Lost Phage research Due to Power Outage

By emmannaemeka @ 2024-11-07T16:05 (+18)

Tl;dr 

Today, I’m reflecting on a frustrating reality plagues many scientists in resource-limited settings: power instability. After months of work on my research into phage therapy, promising experiments, and carefully cultivated cultures, a significant power outage wiped out crucial stages of my research. In a lab with inconsistent electricity, months of progress can disappear overnight. The more I process this setback, the more I see it as a stark reminder of something the EA community values deeply: improving conditions for scientific innovation to create long-term, scalable solutions for human well-being. I aim to raise awareness within EA circles about the importance of supporting the research and the critical infrastructure that underpins the ability to conduct this work effectively. While it’s easy to focus on the promising outcomes of phage research, we must also remember the less visible battles scientists fight daily to keep their work alive.

The Toll of Power Instability on Health Research

In my lab, we’re exploring phages as alternatives to traditional antibiotics, aiming to combat multidrug-resistant pathogens. The promise is immense: Phages could provide life-saving treatments for infections that current antibiotics fail to treat, potentially revolutionizing medicine in low-resource settings. After months of dedicated effort, we’ve already isolated phages against Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a pathogen that presents a particularly high risk due to its resistance to many antibiotics.

Yet, the barriers to developing and testing these therapies in our local context are daunting. Not only do we contend with limited funding and infrastructure, but we also face the persistent, underlying challenge of unreliable power. When you’re studying live organisms with stringent growth requirements, even a few hours without electricity can mean the loss of entire experimental batches. Recently, due to a prolonged power outage, we lost most of our stored phages—months of irreplaceable work gone overnight. This setback underscores the fragility of conducting advanced research in settings with inadequate infrastructure, where progress is constantly at risk of being undone by forces beyond our control.

Why This Matters to Effective Altruism

The EA community is uniquely positioned to help address these challenges. EA’s emphasis on the “global health and development” cause area already champions the importance of allocating resources to solve health issues in low-income regions. Still, some of the barriers to scientific progress—like reliable electricity—are often less visible in these discussions. Losing months of work due to power issues highlights the broader structural obstacles that prevent many researchers worldwide from contributing to humanity’s collective knowledge and health solutions.

For every piece of research lost to circumstances beyond a scientist’s control, we miss out on potential breakthroughs. Imagine the lives that might have been saved or the suffering averted if these setbacks were addressed proactively.

The Broader Impact of Stable Infrastructure

Ensuring stable infrastructure, such as dependable electricity, in resource-limited settings could unlock tremendous innovation potential. Not only does it make scientific progress possible, but it also allows talented researchers to maximize their impact. In the case of phage research, addressing infrastructure issues in under-resourced labs could accelerate the development of treatments for antibiotic-resistant infections—a threat that, according to WHO, could cause 10 million deaths per year by 2050.

Furthermore, bolstering infrastructure helps level the playing field, allowing scientists in all regions to contribute meaningfully to the fight against global health crises. The EA community is well-positioned to push for these systemic improvements through funding initiatives or advocating for global infrastructure improvements.

A Call to Action

My experience is just one of many, and I share it to highlight an area where EA principles can make a tangible difference. By supporting initiatives that address the root infrastructure needs in low-resource settings, the EA community can remove some of the most significant barriers to scientific and medical progress. This can catalyse groundbreaking work, prevent waste of valuable time and resources, and help researchers like myself focus on finding solutions that could benefit millions.

If you’d like to support our lab’s efforts to install solar power and create a stable environment for research, you can do that here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/save-critical-pandemic-prevention-research-lifesaving. Your contribution would directly help prevent further setbacks and enable life-saving research to continue uninterrupted.