Knowing that our nation is a slavishly VIP country people are panic buying medical oxygen cylinders and other related equipment to tackle respiratory distress for fear of the day they contract Covid-19 when public hospital facilities are not open for the public.
The people, who can, are stocking up oxygen cylinders for the fear that if they are infected they could be surer of hospital facilities. Most of the hospitals are not ready for treatment though but it should not be costly. Our healthcare system is broken for the public through corruption under leadership of the Health Minister and other officials.
The whole administration is so humanly corrupted under political cover of no leadership that the people are totally helpless. The public hospitals are either overwhelmed or not available for general patients. The cantonment hospital known as CMH is the best equipped hospital, but one cannot be sure if anyone other than VIPs will have the good fortune to be treated there. Our country is slavishly dedicated to pro-government VIPs.
The upshot of the sudden rise in the demand is the unavailability of medical oxygen for those who really need it which caused a steep rise in its market price and an increased risk of fire and explosion hazards in the residential areas.
Experts said oxygen therapy needs to be supervised by a physician, otherwise it could lead to unexpected dangers and health hazards. Department of Explosives, which controls the import and storage of oxygen cylinders, said there are nearly 80,000 oxygen cylinders in the country, imported by four companies. Nearly 8,000 cylinders were imported since March, the month the first Covid-19 case was detected, according to the explosives department. As the government began dedicating hospitals for treating Covid-19 patients, it soon became clear that almost all the hospitals, even the public ones, lack mechanism to provide most of its patients with oxygen.
Media were flooded with reports about Covid-19 patients grappling to get hold of oxygen cylinders at hospitals or waiting for their turn to get oxygen from a cylinder shared among many despite being severely respiratorily impaired.
It is worthless to say the government is not responding to the needs of corona treatment. The general people lost importance under the no election bureaucracy managed government. The government that is not elected by the people cannot be for the people. So the people will buy cylinders in spite of the risk as the government is not theirs to help them.
