I’m working on a social science writing question and need a sample draft to help me learn.
Use the peer-revieed article I attached on here for this assignment. I will also provide the topic for my project so you can answer question number 5.
Instructions:
Write a review of the article you have selected. This review must include a summary (in your own words of the following):
- The purpose of the study on which the article reports
- The methods used
- The major findings of the article
- A critical analysis of whether or not the project fulfilled its stated purpose and whether the methods used were appropriate to the task
- What the article tells us about issues related to your group’s topic
VIEWPOINTS
Global resource shortages during COVID-19:
Bad news for low-income countries
Devon E. McMahonID1,2, Gregory A. PetersID1
, Louise C. IversID1,3, Esther
E. FreemanID1,2,4*
1 Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, 2 Department of Dermatology,
Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, 3 Center for Global
Health, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America, 4 Medical
Practice and Evaluation Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston Massachusetts, United States of
America
- efreeman@mgh.harvard.edu
The world’s wealthiest countries have been gripped by resource shortages, including shortages
of personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators, during the coronavirus disease 2019
(COVID-19) pandemic [1, 2]. In order to guarantee these resources for their own nation’s
health workers, governments around the world are bargaining for their share in a strangled
global supply chain. For example, countries such as Taiwan, Thailand, Russia, Germany, the
Czech Republic, and Kenya have blocked the export of all face masks [3]. There have additionally been reports of PPE and ventilator exports being intercepted and delivered to the country
with the highest bid, aptly referred to as acts of “modern piracy” [3].
Undeniably, securing PPE for health workers and respiratory devices for patients is a critical part of overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we must not forget that for many
hospitals, these resources have never been in abundant supply. Instead, PPE and respiratory
devices are scarce commodities for many hospitals in low-income countries (gross national
income per capita �US$1,025) under the best of circumstances, with health crises such as the
2014–2016 West African Ebola epidemic highlighting gaps in the global PPE supply [4].
Indeed, deaths from Ebola were concentrated among healthcare providers, with 8.1% of the
total health workforce in Liberia and 6.9% in Sierra Leone dying from Ebola [5]. Hospitals in
low-income countries rely on the same supply chains as hospitals in wealthy countries to
import medical supplies but have significantly less bargaining power to secure resources [6].
Therefore, resource grabs by high-income countries will likely have devastating effects on lowincome countries as COVID-19 continues to spread globally [6, 7]. Already, UNICEF reports
that the organization has only been able to acquire one-tenth of the 240 million masks
requested by low-income countries [6].
To better elucidate COVID preparedness in low-income countries, we combined data from
all service provision assessments (SPAs) conducted in nationally representative surveys of hospitals within the past 5 years in low-income countries, which included Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Haiti, Nepal, and Tanzania [8]. Our analysis of hospital
general clinics confirms limited quantities of PPE, with only 24% to 51% of hospitals reporting
any type of face mask, 22% to 92% medical gowns, and 3% to 22% eye protection (Fig 1). Sanitation supplies were also scarce, with 52% to 87% of hospitals recording soap plus running
water and 38% to 56% alcohol-based hand sanitizer. We found further gaps in ability to provide care for respiratory conditions, again demonstrating under-investment in hospital-based
services [9]. The hospitals analyzed lacked pulse oximeters (12%–48% available), oxygen tanks
(10%–82%), and bag-masks necessary for basic resuscitation (28%–45%). As has been noted
PLOS NEGLECTED TROPICAL DISEASES
PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0008412 July 6, 2020 1 / 3
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OPEN ACCESS
Citation: McMahon DE, Peters GA, Ivers LC,
Freeman EE (2020) Global resource shortages
during COVID-19: Bad news for low-income
countries. PLoS Negl Trop Dis 14(7): e0008412.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0008412
Editor: Abdallah M. Samy, Faculty of Science, Ain
Shams University (ASU), EGYPT
Published: July 6, 2020
Copyright: © 2020 McMahon et al. This is an open
access article distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution License, which
permits unrestricted use, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original
author and source are credited.
Funding: The authors received no specific funding
for this work.
Competing interests: The authors have declared
that no competing interests exist.
by prior studies, more advanced respiratory support such as intensive care unit (ICU) care and
ventilators are even scarcer [10].
An important part of addressing the COVID-19 pandemic is adequate testing at the community level. In addition to current shortages of COVID-19 testing globally [2, 11], the ability
to offer COVID-19 testing will likely be further constrained in low-income countries due to
already limited diagnostic capacity. For example, SPA data show that fewer than 20% of hospitals, besides those in Tanzania, were able to measure CD4 count for HIV monitoring. Additionally, there is limited ability to provide routine childhood vaccination in hospitals in
Afghanistan (35%), DRC (14%), Haiti (57%), and Nepal (60%), underscoring the potential for
gaps in the ability to transport, store, and deliver vaccines if eventually available for COVID19.
With COVID-19 causing unprecedented resource shortages in the world’s wealthiest countries, already limited healthcare commodities will likely become even scarcer in low-income
countries. There have been some rapid adjustments in the global supply chain, with China
increasing its output of medical masks to 12 times previous levels [3]. But with prices for PPE
and respiratory devices soaring, which hospitals will be able to afford them?
In the West African Ebola epidemic, investment in high-quality PPE and infection control
training were important components of halting the spread of disease [12], and where this was
lacking, nosocomial spread was clearly worse [13]. In response to the current COVID-19 challenge, countries such as Afghanistan and Nepal have started manufacturing their own supplies
Fig 1. Availability of hospital clinic PPE, sanitation, and functional diagnostics and therapeutics across nationally representative samples of hospitals in 5 lowincome countries. PPE, personal protective equipment.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0008412.g001
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Global resource shortages during COVID-19: Bad news for low-income countries
PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0008412 July 6, 2020 2 / 3
of PPE and basic life support equipment, but this is not likely to be a feasible approach for all
countries [14, 15].
Continued local as well as international action is needed to ensure access to PPE for all
health workers and respiratory support for all patients, not just for those living in resourceabundant countries. As COVID-19 therapeutics and vaccines emerge, additional international
commitment will be necessary to ensure global access. Equity requires no less.
References
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- Ranney ML, Griffeth V, Jha AK. Critical Supply Shortages—The Need for Ventilators and Personal Protective Equipment during the Covid-19 Pandemic. N Engl J Med. 2020. Epub 2020/03/27. https://doi.
org/10.1056/NEJMp2006141 PMID: 32212516. - Zhou YR. The global effort to tackle the coronavirus face mask shortage: The Conversation 2020. Available from: https://theconversation.com/the-global-effort-to-tackle-the-coronavirus-face-mask-shortage133656 (accessed April 10, 2020).
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- Murthy S, Leligdowicz A, Adhikari NK. Intensive care unit capacity in low-income countries: a systematic
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0116949 PMID: 25617837; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4305307. - Jha AK. To Get Our Economy Moving, Focus On Testing For Coronavirus: Forbes 2020. Available
from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2020/04/08/to-get-our-economy-moving-focus-ontesting-for-coronavirus/#6a1ad82373f2. [cited 2020 June 19]. - Cancedda C, Davis SM, Dierberg KL, Lascher J, Kelly JD, Barrie MB, et al. Strengthening Health Systems While Responding to a Health Crisis: Lessons Learned by a Nongovernmental Organization During the Ebola Virus Disease Epidemic in Sierra Leone. J Infect Dis. 2016; 214(suppl 3):S153–S63.
Epub 2016/10/01. https://doi.org/10.1093/infdis/jiw345 PMID: 27688219; PubMed Central PMCID:
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Hosp Infect. 2015; 90(1):1–9. Epub 2015/02/07. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhin.2015.01.002 PMID:
25655197. - Shah J, Karimzadeh S, Al-Ahdal TMA, Mousavi SH, Zahid SU, Huy NT. COVID-19: the current situation
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