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India has the third-largest number of verified Covid-19 cases worldwide.
Most of the Covid beds – including the 30 in vital care – needed piped oxygen supply.
” Demand for high-flow oxygen has shot through the roofing system after the pandemic,” Dr Muzzafal Lakdawala, who runs a Mumbai-based rock performance venue-turned-600- bed Covid facility with its own oxygen tank, informed me.
With more than 800,000 reported infections and rising, need for oxygen has also increased in India.
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India’s Covid care centres require adequate products of oxygen.
These companies deliver oxygen in liquid type to hospitals with tankers, which are then piped directly to beds. They found that the state of Jammu and Kashmir did not have a single liquid oxygen factory, and there were no medical oxygen makers on the island of Andamans, where cylinders were shipped from the mainland.
The government promptly decided to utilize industrial oxygen for medical usage – there is little difference in between the two, but medical oxygen is purer, provided under stricter regulations and has to be properly dispensed.
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Medical facilities in many cities are now overloaded with Covid-19 clients.
Lots of small gas suppliers complain they are not being paid by government health centers that buy oxygen wholesale. In north-eastern Assam state, for instance, the government hasn’t paid providers for over a year now, says Mr Tikku. A medical oxygen business’s electricity connection was cut off after the cash-starved company defaulted on costs.
Memories are still fresh of a traumatic night in August 2017 when some 30 kids died in a federal government hospital in northern Uttar Pradesh state after the oxygen provider cut off deliveries after expenses went unpaid.
” On the one hand, government asks us to make sure supplies. On the other, they do not pay providers in time, even during a pandemic,” says Mr Tikku.
India now declares to have some130,000 “oxygen supported” beds in more than 3,000 dedicated Covid-19 medical facilities and care units. The federal government likewise prepares to supply some 50,000 ventilators to federal government medical facilities for Covid treatment.
It’s unclear the number of these locations have on site liquid oxygen tanks or cylinder banks providing piped oxygen to clients. Many government healthcare facilities in India’s cities do not have enough piped materials and depend on bulky cylinders.
As the pandemic spreads to villages and towns with creaky public health infrastructure, absence of enough high-flow piped oxygen supplies can cause a great deal of preventable deaths, physicians fear. “We don’t need more ventilators truly. We need more oxygen gain access to in rural areas,” says Dr Atul Varma, who runs a 20- bed healthcare facility in Bihar, one of India’s poorest states.
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Medical professional say oxygen is the crucial to survival of Covid-19 patients.
India’s installed medical oxygen capability is nearly 5 times the existing need, so there are no issues about scarcity in products.
Plainly, making sure India has enough beds with access to high-flow oxygen will be the biggest challenge in the weeks and months ahead when the pandemic inevitably spreads out to the heartland. There are not enough cylinders or piped oxygen and no liquid oxygen makers,” states Mr Sen. “It is going to be challenging.
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