Third annual World Oxygen Day on October 2nd highlights the worldwide significance of supplemental oxygen remedy.
The third annual World Oxygen Day on Thursday, October 2, 2025 brings collectively 20 international affected person advocacy organizations {and professional} societies to acknowledge and lift consciousness of the significance of oxygen and oxygen remedy.
Hypoxemia, or low oxygen ranges, impacts thousands and thousands of individuals globally who stay with quite a lot of respiratory and cardiac circumstances, together with continual obstructive pulmonary illness (COPD). Greater than 9 million individuals around the globe stay with continual hypoxemia. Hundreds of thousands extra want short-term supplemental oxygen to outlive acute circumstances, comparable to pneumonia or traumatic accidents. Individuals of any age can expertise hypoxemia from varied illnesses and different causes.
Signs of hypoxemia can embody shortness of breath, fatigue, and confusion. Hypoxemia is most frequently detected with a pulse oximeter, which makes use of mild pulses to measure how a lot oxygen is connected to hemoglobin molecules within the bloodstream. It’s handled with supplemental oxygen remedy.
Supplemental oxygen is included on the World Well being Group’s Important Medication Checklist; nevertheless, individuals with hypoxemia usually have problem accessing supplemental oxygen remedy gear. Many individuals can’t depart their dwelling as a result of out there gear both can not sustain with their supplemental oxygen wants or is just too cumbersome and cumbersome to move. As well as, gear suppliers (particularly within the U.S.) have confronted important monetary challenges, proscribing their skill to offer acceptable coaching to supplemental oxygen customers and caregivers.
World Oxygen Day raises consciousness of the significance of supplemental oxygen, reduces the stigma of supplemental oxygen remedy use, and highlights the obstacles individuals face in accessing the oxygen remedy they want.
Led by the COPD Basis, quite a lot of actions and consciousness efforts are deliberate for World Oxygen Day, together with an internet innovation webinar, a number of international advocacy webinars, new podcast episodes, and private messages of hope and help from the oxygen group.
In the US, a key focus is lobbying for the Supplemental Oxygen Entry Reform (SOAR) Act, bipartisan laws designed to make supplying oxygen gear extra patient-centric and enterprise pleasant.
“Oxygen is important to everybody, and a few individuals merely want extra. Nevertheless, our international well being programs don’t all the time guarantee it’s as accessible correctly,” stated Mike Hess, MPH, RRT, RPFT, Senior Director of Advocacy and Regulatory Affairs for the COPD Basis. “Everyone wants oxygen. Some our bodies simply want a little bit further. The World Oxygen Day marketing campaign helps increase consciousness of those points to make impactful adjustments and permit individuals entry to the oxygen they want.”
