Nation grapples with shortage of oxygen
GOVERNMENT EXPECTS CASES TO RISE BY FIVE TIMES
With the second highest number of virus cases in Asia overwhelming its health system, Pakistan is facing a new crisis: a shortage of oxygen cylinders.
One of the nation’s largest providers of medical oxygen has increased its supply four times over to 10,000 cylinders since Covid-19 cases began to rise in April. Now almost its entire supply is in use, Alamgir Welfare Trust spokesman Shakeel Dehlvi said.
The Indus Hospital, part of a major chain of private hospitals treating virus patients in Pakistan, decided against providing oxygen to patients under medical care in their own homes after finding a shortage of cylinders, according to its chief executive officer Abdul Bari Khan.
“The amount of oxygen being utilised in this problem is unprecedented — there is a shortfall even without anticipating the demand,” Saad Khalid Niaz, a gastroenterologist at the private Patel Hospital in Karachi and a member of several medical associations in Pakistan, said over the phone. “I am praying and hoping that we are wrong and Imran Khan is right but so far he has not been.”
Like many countries across the world, including neighbouring India, Pakistan has seen infections soar after Prime Minister Imran Khan lifted its lockdown as its economy reeled.
Doctors had warned about hospitals filling up even as Khan’s administration claimed there were enough beds. In late June the prime minister told parliament the country’s health system could handle its pandemic if basic precautions were taken.
Khan’s comments contradict the claims of a senior adviser to his government. Atta ur Rahman, chairman of a government task force on science and technology, has said actual infections in South Asia, including Pakistan, will likely be two to three times the government’s stated numbers.
The double-barrel impact of the virus cutting a swathe through the country when the nation is looking at its first economic contraction in over six decades, is likely to hit Khan’s already waning popularity and tenuous grip on power.
Faisal Sultan, the premier’s point person for Covid-19 strategy, blamed hoarding for the shortfall of medical oxygen and added the pressure on hospitals was easing as the number of new infections appeared to be flattening out. “If there is an intermediary supply side shortage, that is possible,” said Sultan, who is an infectious disease experts. “When there is a run, there is hoarding and artificial shortage because of individual behaviours.”
Stretched hospitals
The government expects cases to rise by five times to peak at 1.2 million cases by the end of July or early August from about 240,848 cases as of Thursday evening.
They had earlier projected the virus to peak in June, based on the observation that most nations had reached their peak five months after the first reported infections, according to state health minister Zafar Mirza who previously worked at World Health Organisation.