Peter Sands of the Global Fund on the pandemic’s positive legacies

WHEN COVID-19 struck five years ago, hundreds of thousands died because of a lack of oxygen. Even in rich countries, demand for oxygen overwhelmed hospitals in the first wave of the pandemic. In low- and middle-income countries, where nine out of ten hospitals had no medical-oxygen capacity, desperate families went to extraordinary lengths to procure oxygen cylinders to try to save their loved ones. In response, close to $1bn was mobilised to help these countries provide emergency supplies of cylinders and to invest in more scalable and cost-effective approaches, such as pressure swing adsorption (PSA) plants that create medical oxygen from the atmosphere. These investments, alongside training, have constituted the biggest expansion in access to medical oxygen such countries have ever seen. In Nigeria alone, 73 hospitals now have or are on track to have PSA plants creating oxygen that is then piped to hospital beds or used to fill cylinders distributed to other health facilities.