A LIFE-saving disposable device, which costs just a few pence to produce, has been invented by a doctor from Lower Darwen.

Andrew Breakell, 35, and his colleague, Dr Chris Townsend-Rose, from the A&E department at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, came up with the idea of making a breathing rate monitor to revolutionise the way oxygen masks are used throughout the world.

The inch-long 'respimeter' ball and tube device has already been tested at the hospital and by the Mersey Ambulance Service.

The doctors came up with the idea after experimenting in Dr Breakell's garden shed with plastic tubing from a fish tank and part of a toddler's toy.

They were looking for an effective, inexpensive piece of equipment which allows instant visual confirmation that a patient is breathing, at what rate and whether or not they are receiving their oxygen correctly.

An alarm can be attached to the devise.

"The whole point was to find something so cheap that you could breathe on it and then throw it away," said Dr Breakell, who attended Billinge High School, Blackburn, and Blackburn College.

" We have a world patent on it and the manufacturers are now working on marketing and advertising it.

Dr Breakell now lives in Liverpool but makes regular visits to see his parents, Lillian and Jim, who live in Sandy Lane, Lower Darwen.

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