Delhi oxygen woes: Situation worsens, focus now on saving lives before hospitals install plants
NEW DELHI: Most of the hospitals in the national capital struggling to ensure a smooth supply of oxygen to patients say that so far, they have had a storage-refill system that has worked well over the years.
The unprecedented rise in requirement of the crucial supply, however, has led to a near-collapse of the system but hospitals seeking frantic interventions say that their first priority, as of now, is to ensure oxygen to save lives rather than scrambling to install PSA oxygen generation plants.
The 675-bed Sir Gangaram Super Speciality hospital in Delhi, for example, had the requirement of 6-7 MT oxygen every day in pre-Covid times while there is storage capacity for supplies lasting seven days.
“However, the demand has nearly doubled these days while the supply has been terribly erratic,” a senior official from the hospital told The New Indian Express.
The official explained that the storage-refill system had been working well until the avalanche of Covid patients needing supplemental oxygen led to its crash, forcing the hospital to send out desperate messages every few hours for more supply.
Nearly 25 Covid patients died at the hospital within a day earlier this week amid conflicting reports that they had lost lives due to oxygen shortage though the hospital later insisted that it was not the case.
Such is the enormity of the situation that many hospitals in the capital are now attendants of critical patients sign undertaking that hospitals will not be responsible if the patients die due to oxygen scarcity.
At Jaipur Golden Hospital in Delhi where 20 deaths were reported on Friday due to oxygen shortage, medical director D K Baluja said even its supply of 3.6 MT oxygen every day, after rationing by the Delhi government, is not being met with. He, however, has much more pressing concern at hand than to arrange for a PSA plant that produces oxygen not considered very pure for medical use when compared to liquid medical oxygen, derived from cryogenic technology.
“We first have to think about saving the lives of 200 Covid patients admitted in our hospital before we can even think of anything else,” he said.
Experts say that installing a PSA oxygen generation plant -- an imported one costing about Rs 1 crore -- takes only a week but hospitals have never felt the need to do because the present system, managed through a robust production and supply system for normal times, worked well.
On Monday, the Centre had said that the medical oxygen supply in the country was over 6800 MT that day, out of a total of 7200 MT produced, which was “sufficient” but clearly it isn’t.
After stepping in to allocate the supply through a rationing system, the Centre, for example, fixed a quota of 480 MT for Delhi but the Arvind Kejriwal government said that it needed about 700 MT given the current explosive situation.
The national capital’s problem gets aggravated as it has no significant oxygen production capacity and with a ferocious second wave of Covid engulfing all neighbouring states such as Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. The oxygen facilities there are already over-stretched attempting to meet local demand.
To fulfill Delhi's current needs, additional medical oxygen now has to be trucked in from industrial zones in eastern India and Kejriwal on Saturday wrote to all other CMs to supply any spare oxygen.
Meanwhile, the Centre on Friday said that a decision has been taken to install DRDO-Tata Sons oxygen generation plants at four central government hospitals -- AIIMS, Safdarjung, Lady Hardinge Medical College, and RML Hospital -- immediately.
“These plants shall have a capacity to generate 1,000 litres of oxygen per minute," the statement stated.