The Covid-19 crisis has caused Australians to examine our hospital system with one question in mind: can it handle the coronavirus surge? There has been fierce debate about whether doubling our ventilators from 2,200 to over 4,000 is sufficient. Australia currently has one ventilator and one Intensive Care Unit (ICU) bed per 11,000 people. We have one doctor for every 285 Australians and one nurse for every 78. Imagine living in a country where there was one ICU bed per 100,000 people and one ventilator per million people. Where there is one doctor per 16,666 people and one nurse per 1,754. Imagine living in a country where at least 3.5 million people did not have access to even one doctor in their district and where only two people in 100 could wash their hands in their home or somewhere close to their home.
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