ALIMA USA's executive director, Charlie Kunzer, and the talented digital artist, Six N. Five, have come together to create the innovative artistic nonprofit campaign, "Breath for All." Through captivating 3D artwork and immersive 8D sound, this campaign aims to raise awareness and support for ALIMA USA's mission of improving medical oxygen access in sub-Saharan Africa. With stunning visuals and peaceful narration, Six N. Five's avant-garde style brings African landscapes to life, creating a backdrop for each meditation. Continue reading as Charlie Kunzer and Six N. Five discuss the inspiration behind "Breath for All" and the importance of medical oxygen access in sub-Saharan Africa. They also highlight the power of art and storytelling to drive impactful change. Through this campaign, they hope to create a world where everyone has the breath they need to live healthy and fulfilling lives.

Where are you based?
Charlie: ALIMA’s headquarters are located in Dakar, Senegal, and Six N. Five is based in Barcelona, Spain.

Can you tell us a little bit about ALIMA and what you do?
Charlie: ALIMA is a medical humanitarian organization that brings together local health workers, national medical organizations, and research institutes to provide quality care to people in sub-Saharan Africa and other countries during emergencies. We provide care to communities in need in 13 countries, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and Ukraine, and 98% of our staff comes from the countries or the areas where we work. As the Executive Director of ALIMA USA, I head up the United States arm of ALIMA, which is focused on raising awareness and funding for ALIMA’s work.

Your new campaign is beautiful. Can you explain the concept behind “Breath for All” and its goal in improving access to medical oxygen in sub-Saharan Africa?
Charlie: Thank you! The concept behind “Breath for All” is all about using the value of breath as a point of connection to draw attention to the millions of people across sub-Saharan Africa who can’t access medical oxygen when they need it. The campaign guides people to tap into their breath — something we often do without much thought — and encourages them to take a moment to breathe then take a moment to give.

Breath for all was created in partnership with creative agency Nazar Works and features 3D digital artwork by world-renowned artist Six N. Five and an immersive 8D sound experience produced by the international music agency MassiveMusic.

Six N. Five, what inspired you to create artwork in support of ALIMA and the Breath for All campaign? How did this connection happen?
Six N. Five: I consider myself a standard citizen, living in the same context and daily routines as most of us, and often overwhelmed by stress or anxiety. I try to create worlds that I need in that moment or that I would like to be in. Through this practice, in the act of modeling a mountain or digitally pruning a tree, I find calm, peace, and personal meditation. These are sensations that I feel and that is why I love to spend hours and hours doing this. I am extremely passionate and happy doing what I do.

For me everything takes on a greater meaning when proposals like the one I received from ALIMA appear. ALIMA is an organization that is deeply connected to communities in sub-Saharan Africa. They raise awareness of important issues and improve the quality of care for millions of people. Innovation is an important component of their approach, which is also an interest of mine. Most importantly, the essence of this campaign “Breath for All” is about bringing people from all backgrounds through an experiential journey, encouraging the appreciation of something we often don’t think twice about: breath.

Six N. Five, can you tell us a bit about how you got into 3D art?
Six N. Five: After finishing high school, I knew that I wanted to pursue a career in art and design. I decided to study graphic design, as it was the only discipline that combined my interests in computer science and creativity. I would also say I am inspired by surrealist artists in general. Their works stand out to me because of how they were able to use their distinctive styles of representation to transport us to distant worlds that only the imagination can reach.

What inspired the use of 3D artwork for this campaign?
Six N. Five: What truly inspires me and often triggers my creativity is the relativity of time. That's why light is a crucial element in any artwork I create. I often use spheres in my works, which some people may interpret as the sun or the moon.

Are there any specific African cultural elements incorporated into the campaign’s music and visuals that you can enlighten us to?
Charlie: Yes there are. Breath for All includes three short meditations (Rise, Refresh, Unwind) and a long-form video narrated by Nigerian voiceover artist Blessyn Kure, culminating in a series of ALIMA patient photos. Six N. Five showcases iconic African landscapes as the backdrop for each campaign meditation: the savannah in “Rise,” the Congo River in “Refresh,” and a stunning Milky Way in the night sky in “Unwind,” inspired by rock formations in the Sahel region of Africa (Mali and Chad specifically). The campaign music nods to the region’s cultural heritage, too, incorporating instruments like the kalimba and mbira.

We love how this campaign pulls you in through a beautiful meditative experience and then uses that to talk about the needed health care in sub-Saharan Africa. What inspired the connection to breathwork for this?
Charlie: In the U.S., people pay to be reminded to breathe through apps and breathwork classes. The Breath for All campaign uses that value for breath as a point of connection to draw attention to the millions of patients who lack access to medical oxygen, which they need to survive.

What are the main challenges faced by medical facilities in sub-Saharan Africa when it comes to diagnosing and treating respiratory distress? Why is there just a need for medical oxygen access in sub-Saharan Africa right now?
Charlie: The issue is not a simple one. Many hospitals in sub-Saharan Africa lack the infrastructure, equipment, and training to diagnose and treat patients in respiratory distress. Rural areas that lack oxygen production plants must rely on expensive, imported medical oxygen to treat patients. In urban areas, aging oxygen plants require repairs, access to parts, and engineers to perform critical maintenance work.

This global gap in access to medical oxygen is not new, but the COVID-19 pandemic thrust the issue into the spotlight as people around the world struggled to recover from the novel virus. Pneumonia, for example, has consistently been one of the world’s deadliest, most neglected infectious diseases, killing more than 2.5 million people a year. Medical oxygen is critical in saving the lives of people with pneumonia. We need to keep the momentum going to address this major health inequity, and not just in times of global pandemic.

ALIMA Mali Recherche et innovation projet AIRE_2022. Copyright Seyba Keita.

Can you explain how ALIMA works with ministries of health in Mali, Niger, Guinea, Sudan, and Burkina Faso to improve access to medical oxygen? Are there any particular countries that are in the most need right now?
Charlie: ALIMA has built strong, trusting relationships with the communities we serve, largely through long-standing partnerships with ministries of health and local medical organizations. This alliance-building work is happening in every country where we work, and across every health issue we tackle.

Through a series of oxygen-focused initiatives in collaboration with national ministries of health, ALIMA has introduced early detection tools like pulse oximeters, updated protocols, trained healthcare workers and technicians in oxygen therapy, boosted oxygen production and repaired production plants. We have carried out repairs at more than five oxygen production plants in major hospitals, and since 2021, 198 technicians and clinicians have been trained in oxygen therapy to ensure ongoing access to medical oxygen in West and Central Africa.

ALIMA works with more than just the need for medical oxygen access. In what way does ALIMA promote research and innovation to improve care and prepare communities for future healthcare challenges?
Charlie: A key priority of ALIMA is to make humanitarian aid more cost-effective with better health outcomes. Conducting research that informs new solutions is one of the primary pillars of our work. We are helping to build the scientific evidence needed to improve location and population-specific care, informing the future of medicine in the countries where we work and innovating outdated models of care. For example, following the aftermath of the 2014 Ebola crisis in West Africa, ALIMA partnered with Securotec to develop the CUBE, a self-contained, clear-walled, and easily transportable treatment unit for patients with highly infectious diseases like Ebola, in a more humane way. This award-winning invention kept health workers safe while also allowing patients to be visited by family without the risk of contamination.

ALIMA Burkina Faso malnutrition aiguë 2021. Copyright Amadou Cissé Bello.

Can you tell us a bit about ALIMA’s research projects on malnutrition, maternal and child health, malaria, Ebola, and COVID-19?
Charlie: One of our primary innovations addressing hunger is the OptiMA protocol — shortened from Optimizing treatment for Acute Malnutrition. OptiMA is a simplified treatment protocol with the power to shape the way we diagnose and treat children with acute malnutrition. The results of our clinical trial in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were published last year in the Lancet Global Health, which you can read here.

Our maternal and child health programs are focused on reducing maternal mortality in areas affected by conflict and emergencies. The Wakobo ti Kodro project is a study testing an innovative strategy that aims to increase the number of women with high-risk pregnancies who deliver at local health centers in the Central African Republic (CAR). It aims to strengthen the collaboration between health workers and traditional birth attendants to better support pregnant women and includes the development of a customized mobile application that can be used by the traditional birth attendants to monitor pregnant women.

As Ebola outbreaks become increasingly common in several countries across sub-Saharan Africa, improving vaccination strategies against the disease can help save countless lives. Over the past few years, ALIMA was an implementing partner in Guinea for a clinical trial that aimed to assess three different vaccine strategies to prevent Ebola. The trial results last year confirmed the safety of the three Ebola vaccine regimens and suggest an immune response for up to 12 months. Read more about the study here.

What are the long-term goals and aspirations of ALIMA in relation to improving healthcare in sub-Saharan Africa?
Charlie: The ALIMA model of humanitarian aid is transforming the approach to emergency health response. ALIMA’s long term goal and aspiration is to help build resilient, sustainable health systems within the countries in which we operate through local partnership, research, and capacity building.

ALIMA Mali OXYGENE 2022. Copyright Seyba Keita.

Do you have any heartwarming stories that you can share about your medical help and providing medical oxygen access in the region?
Charlie: Ten-month-old Baya Traoré is one of the many children treated for respiratory distress with the help of ALIMA in Mali. Baya’s family lives in Sibila, a small town 300 kilometers northeast of Bamako, the country’s capital. His mother, Fatoumata, came to the Sibila community health center for a consultation for her child. Using a pulse oximeter, the center’s technical director found that Baya was in respiratory distress, and was able to immediately refer him to the hospital health center in Markala, 30 kilometers from Sibilia, for oxygen therapy. This center in Markala is one of two hospitals in Mali that benefited from support from partners in an ALIMA-led project. The hospital’s pediatric department was reinforced with oxygen concentrators, pulse oximeters, and essential medicines to improve the management of cases of respiratory distress. The staff was also trained in oxygen therapy and in preventive maintenance of medical equipment for better management of severe cases. Thus, the material and human conditions were in place for the proper care of the little boy. Without this, his case could have quickly turned into a tragedy. See photos of Baya and his mother here.

How can our readers support the Breath for All campaign and help improve medical oxygen access in sub-Saharan Africa?
Charlie: Readers can visit breathforall.alima.ngo to learn about ALIMA’s respiratory health programs and consider making a donation to support our work to improve medical oxygen access in sub-Saharan Africa. We also encourage readers to participate in the guided meditations on our campaign website and share them on social media to help raise awareness about this critical issue.

Additionally, limited edition Breath for All merchandise featuring the campaign’s art created by Six N. Five are now available to purchase. This collection includes shirts, hoodies, and sweatshirts with the different landscapes from each meditation. Proceeds benefit ALIMA’s work to improve medical oxygen access and treatment.

Are there any future projects or initiatives that ALIMA is planning to address healthcare challenges in sub-Saharan Africa?
Charlie: ALIMA is currently expanding its presence in East Africa, beginning operations in Ethiopia this year to address malnutrition. We are also beginning a response in Haiti soon which will include work in primary healthcare, maternal health, malnutrition, and addressing epidemics like cholera.

It has been a crazy past few years, how has ALIMA had to adjust during the ride?
Charlie: The world has seen several humanitarian crises this year–from the war in Ukraine to the displacement of thousands of families fleeing from violence in Sudan. ALIMA is an agile, dynamic organization able to respond to the unique needs of communities. The vast majority of our staff are from the countries in which we work, allowing ALIMA to better understand and respond to the different contexts of crisis and emergency. It also provides a more sustainable approach to aid that leads to longer-term solutions.

What is your motto in life?
Charlie: The needs are great, but so are the opportunities to make a difference.
Six N. Five: Seek joy, and when it's scarce, choose change.

To learn more about ALIMA and the Breath for All campaign, please follow the links below:
www.alima.ngo/en
breathforall.myshopify.com

Breath-taking Art - ALIMA USA and Six N. Five's Artistic Collaboration Improves Medical Oxygen Access in Africa