A health worker moves oxygen cylinders at GTB Hospital in New Delhi on Friday. (Photo | Parveen Negi, EPS)
NEW DELHI: The rise in requirement of the oxygen has led to a near collapse of the system, but hospitals seeking frantic interventions say that their first priority is to ensure oxygen to save lives rather than scrambling to install PSA oxygen generation plants.
Experts say that installing an PSA oxygen generation plant imported ones cost 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.
“However, the demand has nearly doubled, while the supply has been terribly erratic,” a senior official from Sir Ganga Ram Super Speciality Hospital told this newspaper. The official explained that the storage-refill system had been working well until the avalanche of Covid-19 patients.
At Jaipur Golden Hospital in Delhi, where 20 deaths were reported on Friday due to oxygen shortage, medical director DK Baluja said even its supply of 3.6 MT everyday, after rationing by Delhi government, is not met with.
He, however, has much more pressing concerns than to arrange for a PSA plant which produces oxygen not considered very pure for medical use when compared to liquid medical oxygen. Such is the enormity of the situation that many hospitals in the capital are now getting attendants of critical patients to sign undertakings that hospitals will not be responsible if patients die due to oxygen scarcity.
