India's crisis shows how oxygen is a vital medicine not everyone can access
Oxygen is an essential medical treatment to save human lives. But, in recent weeks, it’s become clear just how vital it is as India reels from a deadly surge in COVID-19 cases. Express trains are racing across the country to deliver oxygen from the eastern town of Angul to the capital of Delhi and other regions. Meanwhile, desperate pleas fill social media from people forced to helplessly watch their family members slowly suffocate.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, medical oxygen shortages have struck hospitals in Brazil, Peru, Nigeria, Jordan, Italy, and beyond. In the United States, too, oxygen supplies at hospitals in New York City and California have run dangerously low at times. Combined with the crisis in India, these have now captured international attention.
But these shortages are far from a new phenomenon. Experts say the pandemic is exacerbating the oxygen access gap that causes an untold number of preventable deaths every year in low- and middle-income countries.
“What COVID has done is expose how fragile actually the systems around oxygen have been over the years,” says Mphu Ramatlapeng, executive vice president for implementation at the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), which was recently a finalist for a $100 million grant from the MacArthur Foundation to fund its proposal to ensure oxygen access in India, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda. “My worst nightmare was something like COVID happening.”
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/indias-crisis-shows-how-oxygen-is-a-vital-medicine-not-everyone-can-access