West Bengal directs hospitals to develop oxygen plants

KOLKATA: Anticipating the increasing demand of oxygen in the coming day due to steep rise of COVID in the state, the state health department has asked all the government hospitals to demarcate land for developing oxygen plant within the hospital premises so that the hospitals can become self-sufficient and negotiate their demand for oxygen and not depend on outside help.

The state health department issued a notification on Sunday asking all the government medical colleges, state general hospitals and super specialty hospitals to earmark 152 square metre of land for the purpose of developing an oxygen plant.

"There are some medical colleges that have their own oxygen plant but in most of the cases there is no oxygen plant in many medical colleges, state general and super specialty hospitals. In this condition we would like to make the hospitals self-sufficient so that they can meet their requirement," a senior official of the state health department said.

Presently the requirement in the state is 300 MT and we can produce 450 MT. So, apparently there should not be any shortage of oxygen but with the steep rise of the COVID cases in the state and the central government's decision to divert oxygen to the more deserving states might lead to a crisis of oxygen in the state.

"We are trying to increase the supply so that the increasing demand of oxygen can be negotiated. This will lessen the dependence on cylinders because oxygen will reach the patients through pipeline directly from the plant," the official added.

At present there are 22 medical colleges and 12 hospitals in the state. Apart from that there are state general hospitals in most of the sub-divisions and health centres in the blocks.

According to the senior state health department officials, the government is keen to install an oxygen generating system in most of the state general hospitals, medical colleges and super specialty hospitals.

"It will be taking some time but we have taken a target of installing the oxygen generating plants in all the hospitals within a span of two months," the official added. (IANS)

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