He found no bed for his father. The young man knocked on the door of the San José public hospital, in Callao, the first port of Peru, desperate in search of medical attention for his father, sick with Covid-19, but the medical staff could not attend him, despite the fact that the patient could not walk. Although medical oxygen was available at the center, doctors told him they lacked space in the intermediate care and critical care units, so the family will have to continue to pay for oxygen to prevent the man’s health from worsening. Renting a five-liter bottle of oxygen for six days cost them $ 190, although the first charge lasted only about eight hours. “It is invested considerably and not only for the money, but it suffers for the availability. This feeling of scarcity is fatal, ”explains the young man, who prefers not to give his name. Like him, thousands of Peruvians suffer every day the collapse of the health system and the difficulty of finding oxygen in the midst of the pandemic, which has claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people.
To avoid queuing at dawn to buy oxygen, this Peruvian family has decided to spend $ 600 on an oxygen concentrator, an alternative that very few Peruvians have access to. The price of a 5-liter flow concentrator is equivalent to more than two minimum wages in Peru. And the 500 soles deposit to rent a cylinder of 5 cubic meters is almost half of the minimum monthly salary.
Medical oxygen concentrators do not require recharging, but they do require continuous electricity, and are for sale in some appliance stores, but also on non-regulated sales websites, or on Facebook and other social media. Just as some covid-19 patients go to hospitals and cannot find a bed, others with economic resources avoid going into the hospital and seek oxygen on their own: either in 10-cubic-meter balloons, or in cannulas and other oxygenation devices not invasive.
In the first wave of the pandemic in Peru, hundreds of people died from lack of oxygen or because the prices of refillable cylinders increased until they were unattainable for the majority, therefore, churches, regional governments, companies and artists made public collections for buy and install oxygen plants in all regions. This time, there is more oxygen in the health facilities, but the hospitalization and critical care staff and beds are not enough to meet the demand.
Lisbeth Castro, representative of the Ombudsman’s Office of the Amazon Loreto region, reported on a radio that, since July, 25 intensive care beds in the COVID module of the Regional Hospital cannot be used because there are no mechanical ventilators or because at ten existing ones lack implements. On Friday one of the most important musicians in Peru, Alberto Sánchez Casanova, founder of the Amazon cumbia group Los Wemblers, passed away in Loreto. His daughter commented on Facebook that they expected a space in the covid module of the Regional Hospital, but they never referred it. “Only 27 beds work, but there are none for my dad,” he wrote.
Informality and speculation
Luis Barsallo is a small businessman who sells refills of the input at a fair price in Callao. He became famous from the first wave of the pandemic, to the point that he is known as ‘the angel of oxygen’ and in the press he was highlighted as one of the characters of 2020. Since there is a market of resellers who speculate on the price of oxygen, the employer asks clients to present the documents of relatives with a diagnosis of covid-19 to ensure that they do not provide intermediaries.
Barsallo has said that last week he received threats because he refused to sell to those who did not show those papers and had to close his business one day as a precaution. It reopened on Thursday and Friday, but with police protection. On Saturday, the Public Ministry of Callao opened an investigation for those found guilty of the alleged crime of coercion against ‘the angel of oxygen’. At dawn on Sunday, 110 people slept in tents or on plastic and cardboard outside his store, waiting to recharge 10-cubic-meter cylinders, even with the uncertainty of whether Barsallo would open the store.
“It may sound a bit strong, but there are people who are afraid of dying in the solitude of a health facility and are doing their best to stay at home: there is a feeling in this second wave that oxygen is something that can be self-administered. , but the first option must be that the oxygen is provided by the hospitalization: it must be consumed with a prescription and medical supervision ”, comments to EL PAÍS Alicia Abanto, deputy of public services of the Ombudsman’s Office.
Abanto explains that for a couple of weeks the National Superintendence of Health has published a report on the oxygen available in hospitals and clinics every day. “If a person goes to a hospital and they deny him the medicine, because oxygen is a medicine, he should review the report and complain if it is not provided,” he recommends. “In the midst of this increase in the demand for medicinal oxygen, we see the problem of informal and illegal trade —even in the networks they report fraud— and the very limited intervention of the State to control and sanction. This input has to be distributed by an authorized operator, because self-medicating at home with oxygen that is not of good quality can cost life ”, adds the official.
Abanto reports that in hospital emergencies they send patients home. “They are told that their saturation is not very low, but what they should do is refer them to a hospital where a bed is available,” he said. Although the health authorities report daily that there are still critical care beds, they are located in regions where the indicators of the second wave are still moderate.
The engineer and data analyst Rodrigo Parra commented on the Radioprogramas station this Sunday that the occupancy speed of the UCI beds in the second wave is faster than the supply. “The occupancy was 20 ICU beds per day in the first wave and now it is 30,” he said. Although the maximum occupancy of ICU spaces reached 1,553 last year and this year it was 1,865 with an offer of 1,900 beds, Parra added that these figures are not “as reliable with respect to the reality in hospitals.”
The Peruvian Society of Intensive Medicine revealed since March that there are no more than 700 doctors in this specialty, authorized for critical care units. In addition, the Minister of Health, Pilar Mazzetti, has indicated that only 40% of the staff of Health is operational, either because he died, or because due to age or comorbidities he had to leave the position. Until the end of January, 276 doctors have died from the new coronavirus in Peru: it is the third Latin American country with the lowest losses after Mexico and Brazil, but in proportional terms its loss is greater: it has fewer doctors per thousand inhabitants compared to those countries . This Sunday, a new two-week quarantine began in ten departments of the country where the pandemic is classified by the Government as in an “extreme situation”. Among them, Lima and Callao, the Peruvian port where the population faces the odyssey of finding an oxygen tank for covid patients.
source https://pledgetimes.com/peru-faces-the-second-wave-of-the-pandemic-without-icu-beds-oxygen-or-doctors-in-hospitals/
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