As the UK struggles to cope with the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and increasing winter pressures, doctors have warned that oxygen supplies in the National Health Service (NHS) are running dangerously low.
Running Low on Oxygen
The NHS, which has an annual budget of £150 billion ($208 billion), is under immense strain due to the Covid-19 pandemic, flu, bed-blockers, and winter pressures, as well as staff absences.
As a result, several reports tell us that patients with respiratory illnesses have had to be treated outside of hospital wards, including in ambulances, corridors, cupboards, and hospital offices.
These patients have had to rely on portable canisters of oxygen, which only have around 30 minutes worth of gas until they can be hooked up to a hospital bed. Oxygen is usually delivered to hospital ward beds through a series of pipes.
DailyMail reports that the NHS's main supplier of oxygen canisters, BOC, based in Woking, has had to ration five types of portable oxygen. The company has announced that it is only giving canisters to hospitals in exchange for empty ones.
In a statement, BOC said: "Integral valve cylinders (CD, ZA, ZD, HX & ZX) are currently being supplied on a full for empty basis only. This means we can only supply the same amount of cylinders you are returning and any orders placed for more cylinders than are being returned will be adjusted accordingly."
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However, BOC has insisted that there is no shortage of oxygen, just a spike in demand for its small cylinders. The company is working with the NHS and the Department of Health to encourage hospitals to use their piped oxygen supplies or larger canisters.
The NHS has said that it is seeing "significant demand" for portable oxygen due to a rise in patients with respiratory conditions. It has urged ill Britons to continue using the NHS as normal. However, sources within the NHS have told The Telegraph that the supply of canisters is only meeting around half of the demand from hospitals and ambulances.
Doctors Air Concerns
Doctors have warned that the situation is putting patients "at risk" as they are forced to ration oxygen or use "substandard alternatives." The Doctors Association UK has said that such supply problems, which were uncommon even during the darkest days of the pandemic, are now "a common occurrence."
Telegraph reports that the situation has forced medics to "kick out" patients from beds to corridors as more ill patients need the same beds. Dr. Adrian Boyle, the President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, has said: "There is no problem with piped supplies, this is about where patients are having to receive treatment. It's another illustration of our failure to be able to provide people with the care they need."
Dr. Boyle has warned that up to 500 patients are dying every week due to delays in emergency care.
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