Thanks so much for this work! It’s great.
A few questions largely on the basis of things that seemed surprising in Jeff’s twitter thread.
I was hoping that someone else might understand his work better than I do and show me where I am missing something:
1. Where does the 28 days of oxygen to save a patient’s life come from? I am guessing:
- Perfect deployment (i.e. 100% usage).
- 5-6 days of oxygen per patient.
- 20%ish change in patient to-recovery mortality (this seems pretty high from what I have read, but I am no doctor).
2. The costs of cylinder refills seem to be assumed to just be a market rate cost, but given the lack of oxygen in the right location at all, wouldn’t refills be a hard constraint (i.e. refilling the given cylinder simply substitutes for refilling someone else’s cylinder).
3. Are most concentrators/cylinders being sourced by GiveIndia or Milaap being sourced internationally or domestically?
- How does this interact with the seemingly constrained transport of oxygen (as opposed to concentrators) given the specialized distribution infrastructure?
- In the international case, what seems to be the timeframe for getting them to where they are needed?
- In the domestic case, is there enough certainty around where concentrators will be needed over the next month for us to be confident that this is having a meaningful effect in alleviating a constraint on healthcare?
Really appreciate any feedback, as I am trying to assess where the best place is to help provide a meaningful amount of funding in the next few days.
Thanks so much for getting back to me so quickly—I am trying to target a substantial amount of funds at this issue, but have historically targeted interventions in SSA so our network in India is weak.
I’ve been looking at Milaap and Swasth and having conversations about the extent to which supplies are able to be targeted to locations less likely to be recipients of other concentrator fundraisers and which will see the peak of the pandemic hit shortly. Samhita and oxygenforindia.org were also recommended by a few public health professionals we respect—that said this information has been hugely helpful. I have also spoken with Samhita which seems to have a very solid plan to increase concentrator supply—and potentially increase production capacity.
Thank you so much for your help in this regard—will contribute what I find out to the discussion.