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According to Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, 500 medical oxygen plants are planned in India by the end of this year. PM and CARES to tackle oxygen deficiency in the country’s hospitals and medical facilities “We have allocated a total of 1,000 megawatts of new oxygen to the state,” he wrote in a tweet Tuesday. This is in line with the government’s target of installing 500 Medical Oxygen Plants (MOPs) by 2017, the first year of operation. In the first week of May, DRDO has installed five medical oxygen plants in Delhi.
A central government source said on Sunday that Delhi has installed five new medical oxygen plants (MOPs) with a capacity of 14.4 tonnes under the PM Cares Fund and will increase the capacity for medical oxygen by 14.4 tonnes. The development comes as the states of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and Delhi face a shortage of liquid medical oxygen to treat Covid’s 19 patients. The sources claimed the Delhi government had delayed the hospital’s delivery until November 2020, despite a weekly review of the hospitals. MOPs with a capacity of 14.4 tonnes under the PM Cares Fund were installed in the first week of May, which is expected to be completed by 30 April.
It has taken Narendra Modi’s government eight months to solicit bids for new oxygen-generating plants. The PMO said the oxygen plant is funded by the PM Cares Fund, adding that it had received approval in principle for the same plant. The plant will also improve oxygen supply at district level. On 21 October, a tender was launched asking bidders to build pressure and vibratory oxygen plants at 150 district hospitals across the country. The oxygen plant uses Pressure and Pivot Adhesion (PSA) technology, which separates the gas from an atmosphere mixture, to produce concentrated oxygen that can be delivered to hospital beds via a pipeline, eliminating the need for hospitals to buy liquid oxygen from other sources. On 23 October, the tender was reopened for the first time and the tender for the construction of vibratory pressure adhesives was carried out in 150 districts and hospitals in the countries.
The state government has carried out an emergency procurement of PSA oxygen systems for 10 districts and three others from a company called Airox Technologies from Aurangabad, according to a press release from the health ministry. The hub’s manager, Waji Ud Din, said it would take 15 days to install the facilities, according to the news release. Companies installing oxygen plants have been inundated with orders, he said. SMEs in Uttar Pradesh have also asked the state government to provide them with the latest DRDO technologies related to liquid oxygen plants. Kumar said: “We have asked state governments to provide these technologies and it will take skilled workers to set up an oxygen plant. The IIA has asked state governments to set up a helpdesk dedicated exclusively to oxygen plant projects and to make it available for installation using the latest technology, the press release said. The government has also instructed the Electricity Ministry not to interrupt the power supply of oxygen factories. The state has the largest number of oxygen plants in the country with a total capacity of 1.5 million tons of inox per year. This is happening at a time when hospitals are in need of oxygen to treat diseases such as heart disease, stroke, asthma, lung cancer, heart attack and other illnesses.
The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the National Institute of Health Sciences (NIMS) of India have unveiled a plan to install 150 PSA oxygen generators in hospitals across India. The devices, which are designed to concentrate oxygen from the ambient air on a scale of 1,000 cubic metres per minute (cubic metres per second), are capable of reaching oxygen levels of up to 1.5 times the level of air in a hospital. When a PPE facility is built, a hospital can produce its own liquid oxygen and does not have to buy from a private player. In the last three years, were provided for the installation of oxygen equipment in hospitals Rs 201.5 crore. However, only three of them have been established so far – with the winning tenders being the National Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS) in Hyderabad and the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in Delhi and Mumbai. The oxygen generators on site produce medical-grade oxygen and can reduce the heavy load from traditional storage and supply systems. The Department of Health says demand for medical oxygen has reached its highest level in more than a decade and is expected to rise further in the coming weeks. With the introduction of PPE facilities, the demand for bed-assisted oxygen (O2) in hospitals has increased many times over in recent years.
