Page 9 - GHES-2-3

Global Health Economics and
Sustainability

REVIEW ARTICLE
Medical oxygen production, supply, and

infrastructure augmentation during the
COVID-19 pandemic in India: A narrative review

3
Anjori Agrawal 1 , Kapil Singh 2 , and Ashwani Verma *
1 Programme Management Unit-Medical Oxygen, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW),
Delhi, New Delhi, India
2 National Public Health Surveillance Project, World Health Organization, Delhi, New Delhi, India
3 Department of Pharmacy and Population Health Informatics, School of Pharmaceutical and
Populations Health Informatics, DIT University, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India

Abstract

According to the World Health Organization, the primary symptoms of COVID-19
include fever, cough, and fatigue, while more serious cases present with dyspnea
(difficulty breathing) and chest pain. The medical use of oxygen therapy is a
common life support treatment for numerous diseases at multiple levels of health
care in India. An abrupt spike in medical oxygen demand (nearly 100 – 200 fold) has
been observed in regions such as South America, Africa, and Asia, including India.
Governments of the respective countries have implemented policy decisions to
Academic editor: tackle medical oxygen shortage during the pandemic. In this narrative review, we
Mihajlo Jakovljevic M.D. Ph.D. MAE
describe and summarize the actions taken by the Indian government to manage the
*Corresponding author: medical oxygen requirement during the deadly COVID-19 waves in India. Searches
Ashwani Verma
(vamit1989@gmail.com) were conducted on PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar databases, and websites of
various ministries and departments of the Government of India, covering the period
Citation: Agrawal, A. Singh, K., from January 2020 to January 31, 2023. Qualitative data were extracted using pre-
& Verma, A. (2024). Medical
oxygen production, supply, and defined themes from published documents related to medical oxygen supply during
infrastructure augmentation during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Indian context. This narrative review summarizes the
the COVID-19 pandemic in India: state of medical oxygen during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on medical oxygen
A narrative review. Global Health
Econ Sustain, 2(3):2023. production, supply, infrastructure augmentation, pressure swing adsorption plants,
https://doi.org/10.36922/ghes.2023 capacity building, web application, and monitoring mechanisms. The 76 World
th
Received: October 12, 2023 Health Assembly has also adopted the Access to Medical Oxygen Resolution to
prevent deaths and ensure that no country faces an oxygen shortage, as seen during
Accepted: March 13, 2024
the COVID-19 pandemic.
Published Online: July 10, 2024
Copyright: © 2024 Author(s). Keywords: Oxygen; Medical oxygen; COVID-19; Pressure swing adsorption plant; Oxygen
This is an Open-Access article
distributed under the terms of the storage
Creative Commons Attribution
License, permitting distribution,
and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is
properly cited. 1. Introduction
Publisher’s Note: AccScience The emergence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) threw a curveball at countries
Publishing remains neutral with and their health-care systems. The initial case of severe acute respiratory syndrome
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus responsible for COVID-19, was identified
affiliations. in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, during the January 2020 pneumonia epidemic

Volume 2 Issue 3 (2024) 1 https://doi.org/10.36922/ghes.2023