Overview of Strategic Supply Management of Oxygen for COVID- 19 Pandemic Patient Care in Sri Lanka

Abstract : The immensurable COVID-19 pandemic has a ceaseless destabilizing effects on health systems, economies, and societies around the world. Total number of 671,756 positive cases have been reported in the country and 654,910 of them have recovered from the disease with 16,808 number of deaths out of the population of 21.8 million up to December 2022. Immense burden to the health system and heavy death rate was reported during the 3rd wave for which mainly the delta variant of COVID virus was responsible. Total number of 491,508 patients and 14375 number of deaths as well as nearly 3500 Oxygen dependent patients were managed per day in ICU, HDU, and inward set up using Oxygen concentrator, bi-pap and c -pap machine during 3rd wave. During this period, Ministry of Health had been urged to reassess its hospital surge capacity in relation to predicted COVID patient load. Based on that, the increasing COVID-19 surge has warranted the rapid hospital facilities expansion in every aspect especially in facilities for Oxygen therapy. Ministry of Health, Sri Lanka had to develop strategies for Medical Oxygen management to fulfill its rising demand. All those interventions were focused to improve the accessibility and availability of medical oxygen while preventing irrational use and wastage of Oxygen. The ultimate goal of spending such cost was to prevent morbidity and mortality due to poor access of oxygen. To improve the efficiency and effectiveness of medical oxygen gas utilization, it was important to monitor the capacity improvement and supply process.