How Andhra Pradesh is becoming self-sufficient for medical oxygen

133 new oxygen plants started operating from Monday in Andhra Pradesh, where at least 30 lives were lost during the second Covid-19 wave due to short supply of the life-sustaining gas in the government-run hospitals.

11 more plants are in completion stage.

All these are Pressure Swing Adsorption medical oxygen plants, set up in 104 state-run hospitals across the state with an expenditure of Rs 426 crore.

The capacity of these plants ranges from 500 litres per minute to 1,000.

The availability of the in-house plants, health officials say, would help the state deal with any surge in hospitalisations due to the Omicron variant induced third wave.

The Jaganmohan Reddy administration had begun the installation of the PSA plants last year after at least a dearth of medical oxygen killed over 30 Covid-19 patients in the state.

Eight people died on 3 May while undergoing treatment in the Hindupur government hospital due to interruption in oxygen supply and alleged lag on part of the staff in utilising cylinders kept on reserve.

Barely a week later, about two dozen patients died in Tirupati Ruia hospital, again due to dearth of oxygen. Delay in the arrival of an oxygen tanker from Tamil Nadu was stated as the reason here. The death toll which was initially put at 11 was later revised to 23.

Similar incidents were reported from other parts of the country too during the height of the second wave when oxygen crisis prevailed all around.

Andhra Pradesh officials had to deploy special tankers to procure oxygen from far off places like Angul in Odisha and arrangements were made for their uninterrupted movement.

“The demand for medical oxygen had skyrocketed after Covid-19 and especially last year, we had faced a major challenge in ensuring timely supply. Realising the need to be self reliant with the indispensable commodity, we went with the plan of setting up PSA plants in the premises of every government hospital with over 50 beds,” a health department official said.

All the oxygen beds in the above 104 hospitals are now connected with piped supply from the plants. Cylinders could also be filled there.

The combined oxygen output of these 144 plants is over 1.2 lakh litres per minute.

"We took these steps to achieve self-sufficiency in oxygen availability, as the entire country faced severe shortage during the second wave,” chief minister Jaganmohan Reddy said while inaugurating the 144 plants in virtual mode on Monday.

The Chief Minister mentioned that his government purchased 25 oxygen cryogenic ISO containers for transporting Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO), along with 74 LMO tanks.

24,419 hospital beds in the government sector are now connected with piped oxygen supply, at a cost of Rs 90 crore.

The state government is also providing a 30 per cent subsidy to private hospitals with over 100-bed capacity to set up such oxygen plants.

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