Is There Enough Oxygen for the Second Wave?

Anyone Who Needs Oxygen in Peru Can Hardly Ignore German Companies
“Oxygen is not just any drug; the buying strategy and the logistics are fundamentally different from other drugs, ”says Dr. Rocio Espino. She heads the Medicines Procurement Department (CENARES) at the Peruvian Ministry of Health. In 2020 she was mainly busy getting enough medical oxygen for the many corona patients.

That turned out to be not at all easy, says Dr Espino in an interview with InfoPeru. On the one hand, there was just one (other sources say six) hospitals in Peru with an autonomous oxygen supply, i.e. a system that draws oxygen from the air and breaks it down into medical oxygen. There were no patient beds with oxygen connections, as are common in most countries, in Peru`s hospitals. "And then there is the fact that every regional hospital makes its own oxygen purchases," explains the doctor. That means, until a few months after the outbreak of the pandemic, the Ministry of Health did not know how much oxygen was available in the country and how much was needed.