Gzb dist hospitals self-sufficient in O2
The two big government hospitals in Ghaziabad — MMG District Hospital and Sanjay Nagar Combined District Hospital — are now self-sufficient in supplying oxygen to all their beds, said officials on Tuesday.
Since the second wave of Covid infections earlier this year, the district had planned to set up 11 oxygen plants at different government facilities. Now, only two facilities — Women Hospital and the community health centre in Muradnagar — are yet to get theirs.
“They too will get their plants soon and we will meet the target of 11 oxygen plants by the end of this month,” said Dr Rakesh Gupta, district surveillance officer and nodal officer for new oxygen plants in Ghaziabad.
The 166-bed MMG District Hospital, which served as a dedicated Covid facility, had to rely on oxygen cylinders.
“We have installed a 150 litres per minute (lpm) capacity oxygen plant, and another 1000 lpm capacity plant is being installed. With the two plants, our reliance on oxygen cylinders can now be done away with,” said Dr Anurag Bhargava, chief medical superintendent of the hospital.
Officials of the 100-bed Sanjay Nagar hospital said that they now have two new oxygen plants of 150 lpm and 500 lpm capacity.
“Both will be able to provide sufficient oxygen to all the beds in case of a third Covid-19 wave. We also have one old plant that provides oxygen to just 25 beds. With the two new plants, our hospital has a centralised oxygen supply,” said Dr Sanjay Teotia, chief medical superintendent of the hospital.
The Sanjay Nagar hospital served as a dedicated Covid facility. It resumed other services about a fortnight ago.
According to official records of the state health department, the six districts under the Meerut division have sanction of 55 new oxygen plants in government health care facilities and 36 of them have been made functional so far.
The enhancement of oxygen supplies is part of directions from the Uttar Pradesh government, which is upgrading the health care infrastructure
before any eventuality of a third Covid wave.
According to the officials in Lucknow, the state has about 56,000 isolation beds and 18,000 intensive care unit (ICU) beds (including 6,600 paediatric ICU beds) as part of the plan to deal with any third wave.
They said that installation of oxygen plants is one of the measures and 336 of the overall new 552 sanctioned oxygen plants have come up so far.
“To check the preparedness before any third wave, senior state health department officials will conduct inspections in all the districts on August 27 and 28. They will inspect the Covid vaccination facilities, functionality of PICU and isolation beds, besides operationality of the oxygen plants and other equipment,” said Amit Mohan Prasad, UP’S additional chief secretary (health).