Rich nations grab oxygen supplies as poor struggle to breathe
Hospitals in South Asia, Latin America and parts of Africa are struggling as cases multiply
Soaring demand for oxygen prompted by the coronavirus is bringing out a stark global truth: Even the right to breathe depends on money.
In wealthy Europe and North America, hospitals treat oxygen as a fundamental need, much like water or electricity. It is delivered in liquid form by tanker truck and piped directly to the beds of coronavirus patients.
Running short is all but unthinkable for a resource that can literally be pulled from the air.
But in poor countries, from Peru to Bangladesh, it is in lethally short supply. Across sub-Saharan Africa, oxygen is a costly challenge for government-funded medical facilities such as Guinea’s Donka public hospital in the capital, Conakry. The hospital’s planned oxygen plant has never started up. So instead of piping oxygen directly to beds, a secondhand pickup truck carries cylinders over potholed roads from Guinea’s sole source of medical-grade oxygen, the SOGEDI factory dating to the 1950s. Outside the capital, in hospitals and medical centers in remote villages and major towns, doctors say there is no oxygen at all.
In Bangladesh, the lack of a centralised system for the delivery of oxygen to hospitals has led to a flourishing market in the sale of cylinders to homes. In Peru, the president has ordered industrial plants to ramp up production for medical use or buy oxygen from abroad. He allocated about $28 million for oxygen tanks and new plants. In the few places where in-depth studies have been carried out, the situation looks dire. In Congo, only 2 per cent of health care facilities have oxygen; in Tanzania, it’s 8 per cent, and in Bangladesh, 7 per cent, according to some limited surveys for USAID.