Why Effective Management Of Medical Oxygen In India Is A Challenge
Medical oxygen or rather the lack of adequate supply of it, led to major fatalities in April-May 2021, when India was hit by a brutal 2nd wave of the pandemic. Not very long ago, social media handles, NGO’s, religious organisations and even local communities came together to co-ordinate and facilitate availability of medical oxygen for patients, across the country. Typically, in cases of lung infections and inflammation, human lungs fail to absorb atmospheric oxygen and hence require pure, liquified medical oxygen for supported breathing, so as to keep all vital organs and functions, intact. Unfortunately, the second COVID wave impacted the lungs severely, raising the demand for medical oxygen - doubled within a period of days!
Lack of adequate pure medical oxygen lead to fatalities, many of which could have been avoided by effectively managing the supply of medical oxygen. As per the current method, medical oxygen is sourced by both private and government hospitals through the market, which otherwise suffices the non-pandemic demand. However, during the pandemic, India required about 8000 metric tonnes of medical oxygen per day, compared to the 4000 metric tonnes that it was already producing - almost double of the supply. Although a significant percentage of industrial oxygen was diverted towards medical oxygen and exports were banned, it was still not enough to manage the scale and rapid progression of fatalities resulting from lack of medical oxygen - that could have been prevented with better preparedness and infrastructure.
Decoding these further, listed here are a few points, which needs to be understood in order to make amends and avoid a repetition of the tragic past:
Lack of investment in infrastructure: While healthcare infrastructure in India has been steadily improving over the years, most of it is limited to select private and government aided hospitals in key metropolises of the country. The state of critical care infrastructure is further limited to 10-20 per cent of overall hospital infrastructure investments and again, restricted to select state-of-the art medical facilities. Lack of investment in ICU beds with oxygen supply, and ventilators, was a major factor that determined the a patient’s accesses to medical oxygen - a factor that needs to be immediately addressed.
Ineffective medical supply chains: This is another key aspect that needs to be understood. Given that most medical oxygen is supplied through external manufacturers and dealers, ensuring effective logistics and overall medical supply chain infrastructure becomes crucial for timely delivery of pure medical oxygen. However, transportation brings challenges like delays, chances of leakage and contamination, higher costs and risks of mis-handling the cylinders by untrained staff.
Scalability: The high dependency on external manufacturers and effective medical supply chains for transportation, there are higher chances of a delay and deficit in the demand and supply. Under such circumstances, a rapid rise in demand can be extremely difficult to meet, especially in urgent and critical cases, resulting in a failure to deliver. Scalable and effective solutions for providing medical oxygen to patients not only in times of urgency but also to build a preparedness, is important. And the responsibility for this lies as much on the public sector facilitators as it does with private and public hospitals.
Technology enabled solutions: Even as tech adoption across sectors continues to disrupt the way we live and work, healthcare technology adoption has so far been limited to patient engagement, virtual consultations, data analytics, diagnostic infrastructure and robotic surgeries. It is high time that tech adoption should also extend to designing smarter medical devices and tech enabled solutions that can help build stronger and smarter devices that can enhance the medical infrastructure, making it reliable, scalable, effective.
While the above factors point to the systemic challenges of medical oxygen supply in India, they can be easily navigated through a strategic plan on making hospitals and medical care centres self sufficient with a smart, affordable, scalable and reliable source of generating pure medical oxygen on the premise. Although aspirational, this approach could help in not only addressing the volatile supply needs but will also help reduce the overall cost of medical oxygen, avoid contamination, eliminate delays and thus reduce the rate of avoidable fatalities, and lastly, strengthen the overal critical care infrastructure across the country.
.jpg)
