Ramesh Lamsal

IT’S all around us, but people all across the country are scrambling for it these days.
I am talking about oxygen, the gas that sustains our life. The atmosphere around us has about 78 per cent nitrogen, 21 per cent oxygen and 1 per cent other gases. We breathe in oxygen from the atmosphere, but in recent weeks the second wave of COVID-19 has gripped the entire country, and most people are spending a lot of their time every day talking and worrying about growing shortage of medical oxygen to save human lives.
After the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic subsided, the daily new infections of COVID-19 in Nepal fell below 100, while the deaths were almost nil. Both the government as well as the public behaved as if everything had returned to normal.
However, once the COVID-19 cases began surging in India, New Delhi in particular, from early April and deaths shot up in absence of enough hospital beds and oxygen cylinders, things also began going awry in our country. Many migrant workers, mainly from western Nepal, began returning home from various parts of India and in the process brought the new variant of the virus, too. The political gatherings, wedding ceremonies and festivals also contributed to rise in the virus cases.
The situation started to deteriorate in Nepalgunj in lack of enough hospital beds, ventilators, and ICUs and in the last few days the patients have been dying by dozens there. The capital valley has been another hot spot lately recording nearly half of over 7,000 infection cases on a daily basis. The fatalities have jumped from around 50 last week to over 150 daily in the last few days.
In an unwitting turn of events, few weeks ago the Health Ministry announced that the country’s health system had been overwhelmed, drawing flak from the public. This gave rise to insecurity among the people, prompting them to hoard oxygen cylinders at home though there is no guarantee that oxygen alone saves the lives of COVID-19 patients.
One after another hospital issued notice saying they would be unable to admit and treat patients in absence of medical oxygen. Since a few days ago, the government began distributing oxygen thorough a centralised mechanism. But the hospitals have been saying that the number of cylinders they get is insufficient. As an alternative, the government has instructed hospitals having more than 100 beds to install their own oxygen plants within 15 days. The private hospitals, however, have termed the government’s instruction unrealistic and expressed their inability to implement it owing to resource and time constraints.
As a good neighbour, China has provided 20,000 cylinders (along with other health equipment) out of which 800 cylinders have been flown in; the government has said that 1,200 more cylinders will be airlifted soon, but there is no definitive time line while the situation is aggravating day by day. Amid this gloomy state of affairs, Nepali migrant workers in the Gulf countries sent 560 cylinders Saturday to alleviate the suffering of their near and dear ones back home.
Every evening, when I sit with my family in front of the TV set to get the updates about the situation, I see little to console myself. Relatives of COVID patients have been going round desperately from one plant to another in an attempt to get hold of an oxygen cylinder. In this perilous situation, I pray to God, selfishly, to spare me the distress COVID-19 infection causes, when there is no guarantee of a bed or oxygen supply even in hospitals in the capital.