By Purusha Shirvani
February 27, 2021
There is a massive medical oxygen shortage affecting several nations in Latin America and Africa, leading to unnecessary deaths, according to doctors.
Installing a new oxygen plant may take 12 weeks or more, leading to long-term shortages that can’t be addressed quickly enough. Countries like Brazil and Nigeria have only recently starting making efforts to combat it in the last month.
Governments are taking actions too slowly, and some families are turning to the black market to acquire the essential resource. Some peddlers are selling fire extinguishers colored as oxygen tanks to unknowing desperate people.
Governments have only starting addressing the problem after the deaths of four people were blamed on lack of medical oxygen.
Even before the pandemic, 2,600 oxygen concentrators and 69 functioning oxygen plants met less than half the need, leading to preventable deaths, especially from pneumonia, said Dr. John Adabie Appiah of the World Health Organization.
The World Bank has provided billions in funds to be used for poorer nations in efforts combating covid 19 situation, but the overwhelming majority have not made efforts to use that fund to address the medical shortage.
Doctors across the various regions have been forced to pick which people to save, and having to leave the others without essential supplies.
A global task force addressing oxygen was formally announced Thursday and will include the World Health Organization and World Bank, among others. $90 million was identified in immediate oxygen funding needs for 20 developing countries, including Nigeria and Malawi.