Undetectable medical deficiency: oxygen

At the peak of Covid-19 Pandemia, they died in indigent nations, literally catching their breath, even in hospitals. They lacked medical oxygen, which briefly supplies in most of the world.

On Monday, the expert panel published a comprehensive report on a shortage. The report noticed that every year over 370 million people around the world need oxygen as part of medical care, but less than 1 in 3 will receive, threatening the health and life of those who do not do it. Access to secure and inexpensive medical oxygen is particularly circumscribed in countries with low and medium income.

“The need is very urgent,” said Dr. Hamish Graham, a pediatrician and main author of the report. “We know that more epidemics are coming, and in the next 15 to 20 years there will be another pandemic, probably like Covid, in the next 15 to 20 years.”

The report, published in Lancet Global Health, appears only a few weeks after Trump’s administration froze foreign facilitate programs, including some that can improve access to oxygen.

According to the report, an raise in the availability of medical oxygen would require investment by around $ 6.8 billion. “In the current atmosphere, of course, this will become a more challenge,” said Carina King, an epidemiologist of an infectious disease at the Karolin Institute and the main author of the report.

However, she said that the governments and financing organizations should prioritize medical oxygen because of its importance for healthcare. People of all ages may need oxygen for pneumonia and other respiratory diseases, in the case of severe infections, including malaria and sepsis, surgery and chronic lungs.

“We do not put oxygen in relation to other priorities, but rather that it should be embedded in all these programs and in these priorities,” said Dr. King. “This is completely fundamental for the functioning healthcare system.”

Medical oxygen has been used for over 100 years, often for the treatment of patients with pneumonia. But it was added to the list of basic drugs of the World Health Organization only in 2017.

At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, every breath counts, a coalition of over 50 organizations, pushes on increased access to medical oxygen. By the end of 2022, a trained task group mobilized over $ 1 billion of oxygen equipment and stocks in over 100 countries.

One of the countries that made significant investments in improving access to oxygen is Nigeria, which took steps in this direction before Covid.

Nigeria established about 20 profitable plants to generate oxygen on site for hospitals and studied liquid oxygen plants that can provide huge swaths of urban areas, said Dr. Muhammad Ali Pate, Minister of Health and Social Welfare.

Many hospitals have no systems that can reliably provide oxygen, “so this is a type of project and a problem that we have to deal with,” he said. “Make more.”

Modification of hospital systems to supply oxygen can be engineering and market problems, and oxygen supply requires infrastructure that can transport ponderous oxygen tanks over long distances.

Even after ensuring oxygen supply, oxygen supply equipment directly must be routinely maintained and cleaned, and spare parts may take months. Healthcare employees must be trained in effective utilize of equipment.

“We saw so many investments in equipment, but very few investments in a balanced manner operationalization of this equipment,” said Dr. King.

Healthcare devices also require pulse oximeters to test and monitor oxygen levels in blood during treatment. But in countries with low and medium income, pulse oximetry is used in less than 1 in 5 patients in general hospitals and is almost never used in primary healthcare, according to the report.

The panel included the references of patients, families and healthcare employees who struggled with oxygen deficiency. In Sierra Leone, before the Covid-19 pandemic, only one public hospital throughout the country had an functioning oxygen plant, which caused thousands of people that can be avoided. In Pakistan, a man with a chronic lung condition said he stayed at home and avoided stairs to prevent the lungs to prevent tension. He had to borrow money from friends and family to pay treatment costs in the amount of USD 18,000.

In Ethiopia, the doctor was forced to take oxygen from one patient to treat the other who was more desperately ailing. “It was very painful, trying to decide who life and who dies,” he said.