Medical oxygen scarce in Africa, Latin America amid virus

DAKAR, SENEGAL — A crisis over the supply of medical oxygen for coronavirus patients has struck nations in Africa and Latin Amer- ica, where warnings went unheeded at the start of the pandemic and doctors say the shortage has led to unnecessary deaths.

It takes about 12 weeks to install a hospital oxygen plant and even less time to convert industrial oxygen manufac- turing systems into a medi- cal-grade network. But in Brazil and Nigeria, as well as in less-populous nations, decisions to fully address inadequate supplies only started being made last month, after hospitals were overwhelmed and patients started to die.

The gap in medical oxygen availability “is one of the defining health equity issues,

I think, of our age,” said Peter Piot, director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who said he survived a severe coronavirus infection thanks to the oxygen he received.

Doctors in Nigeria anx- iously monitor traffic as oxygen deliveries move through the gridlocked streets of Lagos. Desperate families of patients around the world sometimes turn to the black market. Governments take action only after hospitals are overwhelmed and the infected die by the dozens.

In Brazil’s Amazonas state, a pair of swindlers were caught reselling fire extinguishers painted to look like medical oxygen tanks. In Peru, peo- ple camped out in lines to get cylinders for sick relatives.

Only after the lack of oxygen was blamed for the deaths of four people at an Egyptian hospital in January and six people at one in Pakistan in

December did governments address the problems.

John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said medical oxygen is a “huge critical need” across the conti- nent of 1.3 billion people and is a main reason that COVID- 19 patients are more likely to die there during surges.

Some oxygen suppliers have dramatically raised prices, according to a doctor at the Lagos University

Teaching Hospital who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to talk to reporters. That has driven up the cost of a cylinder by 10 times, to $260 — more than the average monthly wage — and a critically ill patient could need up to four cylinders a day.

In all, health experts estimate that 500,000 patients in developing countries currently need 1.1 million oxygen cylinders a day.