Oxygen: An Essential Medicine

Every two years, the World Health Organization compiles an essential medicines list (EML). The medicines on this list are defined as “the minimum medicines needed to satisfy the priority needs for a population and for a basic health-care system.” These essential medicines are selected based on their effectiveness, safety, and cost-effectiveness.

One of the most important, yet basic, medications on the EML is oxygen. Ensuring that oxygen is readily available for its patients is considered essential for every global hospital and clinic.

However, in Haiti, oxygen is very expensive and can be difficult to access. For Grace Children’s Hospital (GCH), where many patients arrive with respiratory illnesses, keeping a basic medication like oxygen in ready supply can be difficult because of the cost and limited supply. For health care workers, and parents of children who struggle to breathe properly, not having this basic form of treatment is heartbreaking.

Fortunately, with the help of your generous donations, ICC USA was recently able to purchase and ship 2 oxygen concentrators to GCH. Each of these concentrators can produce up to 10 liters per minute of highly concentrated oxygen from room air, which contains oxygen at a much lower concentration. 14 child and adult oximeters (which can be used to monitor blood oxygen concentrations) were also sent to GCH.

We want to thank all of you who have helped to provide much needed essential medication to the patients at Grace Children’s Hospital.

Thank you to Dr. Jeannine Hatt for her contributions to this blog.