Oxygen shortages are plaguing India amid its explosion in COVID-19 cases — and experts say it is a result of years of insufficient spending on its healthcare system and the government’s failure to prepare for a virus surge.

“It is disheartening. We are not a rich country. There has always been an inadequate health budget,” Dr. Vineeta Bal, an immunologist at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research,told NPR.

He pointed out that the county only allocates about1 percent of its gross domestic product on public health — far less than countries such as Brazil, which spends 9 percent, and the US, where it is around 18 percent.

“One percent of GDP is a pathetic state of affairs. It’s nothing!” he told the outlet.

The government has also been criticized for not heeding calls to ramp up supplies for a second wave of the pandemic.

Oxygen demand in India has increased sevenfold since last month, as the country reached record-breaking cases numbers, logging more than 400,000 daily infections twice.

Health Minister Harsh Vardhan has insisted that the country has enough oxygen, but supply chain issues have hampered its ability to transport it where it needs to be.

Most of the oxygen is produced in the eastern parts of India, while demand is on the rise in northern and western regions.

“We actually have excess production and storage [of oxygen] in eastern India and other areas, but Delhi is having problems,” said S.D. Mishra, who oversees oxygen supply at the Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organization, told NPR.

The US and other countries have also shipped empty cylinders and oxygen concentrators, which help recycle oxygen from the air for medical use. But the machines have reportedly been slow to move through customs.

For some patients, the race to get oxygen to hospitals hasn’t been fast enough.

Around two dozen died on Tuesday after oxygen reportedly ran out at a Chamarajanagar district hospital in the southern state of Karnataka.

When a delivery was delayed by 90 minutes, another dozen patients reportedly died at the Batra Hospital in New Delhi.

Such situations have forced families to attempt to procure oxygen on their own to save their sick loved ones.

Some have turned to the black market. One man in the northern city of Lucknow, Ahmed Abbas, said he was charged 45,000 rupees or about $600 for an oxygen cylinder.

“They asked me to pay in advance and pick it [up] from them the next day,” the 34-year-old told AFP.

Others are desperate to even get their hands on an empty cylinder.

“We are not getting full cylinders, so we are trying to find empty cylinders, because we can still get those filled,” Sanchi Gupta, whose mother was on a ventilator at Saroj Hospital in New Delhi, told reporters, NPR reported.

“What is happening with the government? Why don’t we have oxygen?” she cried out.

With Post wires