Medical oxygen a human right, Cardinal Alencherry
Saji Thomas - April 2021
Cardinal Alencherry makes his plea as hospitals are forced to turn away critically ill Covid-19 patients
Cardinal George Alencherry has urged India’s government to consider medical oxygen as a basic human right as the country faces an unprecedented shortage of the life-saving gas, causing the deaths of hundreds of Covid-19 patients.
"Treat the availability of medical oxygen as a basic human right and take all necessary measures immediately to make it available to the people who are struggling hard to hang on to their lives in hospitals and healthcare centers," he said in an appeal to the federal government.
Cardinal Alencherry's call came after both government and private hospitals in national capital New Delhi and other states turned away critically ill Covid-19 patients who required oxygen support to sustain their lives.
Since early April, hospitals in many cities and towns of India have been reporting a lack of beds and oxygen to assist hundreds of patients as pandemic cases began to spiral out of control.
The second wave of the pandemic has wreaked havoc, exhausting all medical facilities in the country and forcing people to die even inside hospitals for want of oxygen.
As India began to add more than 300,000 new coronavirus cases each day for the past week, many are also dying in their homes unable to get a bed or medical treatment in a hospital.
Social media has horrific images of people dying in ambulances in front of hospitals without oxygen and medical care, exposing the collapse of medical infrastructure.
Cardinal Alencherry wants the federal and state governments to declare medical oxygen a human right as its black marketing and exorbitant prices have taken a great toll on the poor.
"We usually speak of food, clothing and shelter as basic human needs that a government should provide for its people. Now, with the increasing spread of Covid-19, the lives of the people are in extreme danger and there is a great clamor for medical oxygen for survival," the cardinal said.
Cardinal Alencherry, head of the Eastern-rite Syro-Malabar Catholic Church and president of Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council, said medical oxygen "should be treated on a par with food, clothing and shelter."
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