Imtiaz Sooliman – Gift of the Givers overwhelmed desperate plea for oxygen.

Alright, non governmental organization, gift of the givers

Foundation, says that they are inundated with by people and

patients calling out desperate pleas for oxygen. Gauteng is

already exceeding the numbers of infections reported at the peak of

the first and second wave. The province accounts for more than

60% of all active cases in the country, and private and public

hospitals are under severe strain. Now let's discuss this. Then

further, we're joined via zoom, by gift of the givers. Founder,

doctor mitia Suleman. Doctor Suleman, it's always a pleasure to

speak to you. Thank you for being with us here on sabc news, sir.

Thank you for thank you very much. Talk to us about just how, you

know, desperate this situation is. I mean, I understand that you are

inundated, you know, with calls about oxygen tanks. I mean, this,

this also, then also, kind of says a lot and paints a picture about

the faith that is lost in in the public health system, and perhaps,

you know, government as a whole, while we're dealing with this

pandemic, or are you perhaps reading it differently?

Why is a combination of both?

Let's take the first wave and the second wave. It's not much

different in terms of the calls. People want oxygen cylinders.

People want oxygen, people want beds. People want to go to

hospital. People want some kind of hope for survival. What's

different in this wave is that the calls are now coming for oxygen

concentrators from general practitioners and physicians. And

I find that strange, and ask them about why are you guys asking for

oxygen concentrators? And they said, look, the problem is there's

no beds. There's probably hospitals and private hospitals

are full and to give the patient a chance of survival, but the hope

that some bed becomes available, we're increasing the number of

oxygen concentrators be using at home, and we're doing home care,

and the general practitioners and physicians are actually visiting

patients at home. But we I said, but in the first and second wave,

there were so many oxygen concentrators. One doctor tells

me, I we had 140 we need another five or 600 and it won't be

enough. And that kind of messages we're getting from different

doctors from throughout the region, in gauteng, so you have

this extra need of doctors having the ref oxygen concentration. And

then we said, okay, the problem is counting. There's there's several

problems. One is a number of infection when if you looked at

first and second wave, it was spread out throughout the country.

In the third wave, the largest number of infections, 67 to 70%

are in gauteng itself. Yeah. So it means the number of infections in

the country, in that province is the biggest in the whole country,

which means more beds are required. But now there's another

problem. Charlotte hospital is closed, so we lose the capacity of

300 to 400 patients. At the peak of the second wave, that hospital

is running between 304 100 patients and Ill once. So we have,

we have that loss. You don't have the space for those patients, and

with the extra infections, you're getting more people to carry

hospital at the same time? So the physicians are treating patients

at home with the hope you know that they will survive, but we

know that's not ideal, because five liters and 10 liters oxygen

concentrators are not going to do much when the oxygen requirement

becomes higher than that, when people get more ill, when they

progress and they need to go to go to hospital, and that's where the

challenge comes, that more people will die. Dr suraman, you were

watching the situation, the dire situation in India, quite closely.

I do understand that gift of the givers was somewhat involved

there. I'm hoping that with that involvement, there were, you know,

some lessons learned that perhaps, you know, you picked up that you

know, you can help in terms of stopping that from happening in

South Africa. I mean, it's such a huge task for you, indeed, but

certainly haven't seen and we saw those visuals coming out of India

of what was happening there. And I wonder if there are lessons that

you picked up that can be brought here so that we don't really find

ourselves and ourselves in exactly that, that situation that we saw.

It's the converse. India is asking us, what did we learn from our way

to the side? They want that kind of feedback. Yeah,

it's simple flow. It's very, very simple. You know what? We can say,

lock down, 5321, whatever we want to say, we can say, You know what?

You know, close, this close that. The reality is that's in our own

hands. Yeah. We have to be responsible, because, you we the

ones that actually carry the virus. It's nobody else. So each

person has to take that responsibility. And if we do that,

you know, we still got a chance. You know, we are hoping the rest

of the cap and and, you know, the other Puma, Langa, doesn't go the

way. It's how thing is going, but it seems to be heading that

direction already. But in the rest of the country, if we just follow

the rules of masking, making sure we are responsible for ourselves,

our families and those around us, wherever we walking, you know, so

the left, the right, behind and in front, make sure we not too close

to the people. Make sure there's enough ventilation, yeah, make

sure you don't spend too much of time in in close places. That's

the simple rules, you know, that will help us. That's from a

individual point of view, from a government for.

Of you, we should have learned lessons already from this first

and second wave. And one of the big problems is we haven't put

enough healthcare workers in hospitals. Healthcare workers get

burnt out. They die, you know? They get infected. The number of

healthcare workers becomes less, and the burden on existing

healthcare workers becomes more, which has happened in the first

and the second wave, and we've seen that in Europe and America,

we haven't addressed that issue. There was a shortage of medical

personnel before covid 19, and we haven't filled that gap. And what

we have, what we haven't done from the second wave, is to make sure

we have enough bulk oxygen in many more hospitals, but more oxygen

points and more oxygen devices. That's an absolute essential. We

all went on the government went on issue. We're going to vaccinate,

and that's going to help us, but we knew for a fact we're not going

to vaccinate 45 million people in time of the third wave. We had to

do two programs, the vaccination as well as parallel, preparing the

hospitals. Not only have we not prepared hospitals, one of our

main hospitals even checked in Johannesburg and for two months,

and we don't know why. Alright, Doctor Sullivan, thank you very

much for your work. Would have loved to continue. Unfortunately,

we're out of time at this point, but good luck with all your work.

Thanks very much for speaking to us.

Thank you. Alright, that is gift of the givers. Doctor emissions

Suleiman, and of course, talking about some of the desperation,

really, that is happening in our country with the calls they are

inundated with, the calls for oxygen tanks. So just that

discussion there.