Improving oxygen delivery: Country progress in the time of COVID-19
Over the last two years, countries have made great strides in improving access to oxygen as a critical treatment for COVID-19 and beyond.
PATH and the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), together with the Every Breath Counts coalition, have been supporting numerous low- and middle-income countries in their work to improve reliable access to a comprehensive respiratory care treatment package—both as part of the immediate COVID-19 response and to strengthen long-term oxygen ecosystems. Key components of these efforts included:
- An assessment of the gap between the current availability of respiratory care equipment compared to the forecasted need for equipment to inform national policy and planning.
- An oxygen roadmap or strategy that outlines a national vision for oxygen access and provides one central framework to prioritize oxygen in the country.
- Strategic collaboration with all key oxygen stakeholders, including manufacturers and distributors, civil society, health departments, donors, and implementers, to ensure oxygen scale-up is well coordinated.
- Appropriate equipment procurement, distribution, and maintenance to ensure equitable access to oxygen, including functional infrastructure, equipment and devices, and spare parts and consumables.
- Sufficient human capacity, including biomedical engineers to maintain oxygen equipment and for health care workers to administer oxygen therapy to patients.
Through additional support from Unitaid, PATH and CHAI were able to leverage existing work collaborating with ministries of health to procure and deliver respiratory care equipment across health facilities in nine African countries—Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Liberia, Malawi, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Uganda, and Zambia.
The following infographics provide a snapshot of the milestones that countries we partner with have achieved between 2020 and 2022.
Collectively, these countries drove forward a tremendous amount of work. This set of global infographics offers a by the numbers view of some of that collective progress. Note: The numbers related to capacity-building, road map development, and biomedical equipment surveys are inclusive of PATH- and CHAI-supported efforts and may not reflect all initiatives conducted in these countries within this timeframe. The procurement numbers are inclusive of all procurement reported through the World Health Organization's Supply Chain dashboard, and therefore, provide a broader picture beyond the scope of this project.
- Download image and document files here.
- Procurement to patient: Increasing access to medical oxygen during the COVID-19 pandemic story.
- Additional messaging and graphics can be found through our Markets Matter: Closing the Oxygen Gap campaign.
PATH would like to provide special recognition to RRD Design LLC for graphic design of these infographics.