{"id":22367,"date":"2025-02-17T22:30:04","date_gmt":"2025-02-17T23:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=22367"},"modified":"2025-02-18T00:26:17","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T00:26:17","slug":"an-invisible-medical-shortage-oxygen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=22367","title":{"rendered":"An Invisible Medical Shortage: Oxygen"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Oxygen is vital to many medical procedures. But a safe, affordable supply is severely lacking around the world, according to a new report.<\/p>\n

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At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, millions of people in poor nations died literally gasping for breath, even in hospitals. What they lacked was medical oxygen, which is in short supply in much of the world.<\/p>\n

On Monday, a panel of experts published a comprehensive report on the shortage. Each year, the report noted, more than 370 million people worldwide need oxygen as part of their medical care, but fewer than 1 in 3 receive it, jeopardizing the health and lives of those who do not. Access to safe and affordable medical oxygen is especially limited in low- and middle-income nations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe need is very urgent,\u201d said Dr. Hamish Graham, a pediatrician and a lead author of the report. \u201cWe know that there\u2019s more epidemics coming, and there\u2019ll be another pandemic, probably like Covid, within the next 15 to 20 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report, published in The Lancet Global Health, comes just weeks after the Trump administration froze foreign aid programs, including some that could improve access to oxygen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Boosting the availability of medical oxygen would require an investment of about $6.8 billion, the report noted. \u201cWithin the current climate, that\u2019s obviously going to become a bit more of a challenge,\u201d said Carina King, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Karolinska Institute and a lead author of the report.<\/p>\n

Still, she said, governments and funding organizations should prioritize medical oxygen because of its importance across health care. People of all ages may need oxygen for pneumonia and other respiratory conditions, for severe infections including malaria and sepsis, for surgeries and for chronic lung conditions.<\/p>\n

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Oxygen is vital to many medical procedures. But a safe, affordable supply is severely lacking around the world, according to a new report.At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, millions of people in poor nations died literally gasping for breath, even in hospitals. What they lacked was medical oxygen, which is in short supply in much of the world.On Monday, a panel of experts published a comprehensive report on the shortage. Each year, the report noted, more than 370 million people worldwide need oxygen as part of their medical care, but fewer than 1 in 3 receive it, jeopardizing the health and lives of those who do not. Access to safe and affordable medical oxygen is especially limited in low- and middle-income nations.\u201cThe need is very urgent,\u201d said Dr. Hamish Graham, a pediatrician and a lead author of the report. \u201cWe know that there\u2019s more epidemics coming, and there\u2019ll be another pandemic, probably like Covid, within the next 15 to 20 years.\u201dThe report, published in The Lancet Global Health, comes just weeks after the Trump administration froze foreign aid programs, including some that could improve access to oxygen.Boosting the availability of medical oxygen would require an investment of about $6.8 billion, the report noted. \u201cWithin the current climate, that\u2019s obviously going to become a bit more of a challenge,\u201d said Carina King, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Karolinska Institute and a lead author of the report.Still, she said, governments and funding organizations should prioritize medical oxygen because of its importance across health care. People of all ages may need oxygen for pneumonia and other respiratory conditions, for severe infections including malaria and sepsis, for surgeries and for chronic lung conditions.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22369,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22367"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22370,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22367\/revisions\/22370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}