NHAI to set up 25 more O2 plants at UP hospitals

LUCKNOW : The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) will set up 25 more pressure swing adsorption (PSA) oxygen generation plants in Uttar Pradesh having already set up an oxygen plant for the Defence Research and Development Organisation’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee Covid hospital at Avadh Shilp Gram here in record five days’ time, said an NHAI official. The NHAI will do civil and electrical works on a war-footing so that the proposed oxygen plants start at the earliest, he added.

LUCKNOW : The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) will set up 25 more pressure swing adsorption (PSA) oxygen generation plants in Uttar Pradesh having already set up an oxygen plant for the Defense Research and Development Organisation’s (DRDO) Atal Bihari Vajpayee Covid hospital at Avadh Shilp Gram here in Lucknow in record five days’ time, said an NHAI official.

“The Central government has mandated the NHAI to establish 51 PSA oxygen generation plants across India, and of them, 25 will be set up at different locations in UP,” said Abdul Basit, NHAI regional officer.

The NHAI will do civil and electrical works on a war-footing so that the proposed oxygen plants start at the earliest, he added.

He said two agencies – the DRDO and the HITES (HLL Infratech Services Ltd) – had been assigned the task of operationalizing oxygen plants in UP with the NHAI executing the civil and electrical works for these plants.

There are 12 DRDO sites where 500 LPM oxygen plants will be set up. These are Agra (118-bed district hospital), Sant Kabir Nagar (100-bed district hospital), Kasganj (100bed district hospital), Kaushambi (100-bed district combined hospital), Banda (113bed district male hospital), Auraiya (100-bed district hospital), Farrukhabad (120-bed RML male hospital), Kannauj (100-bed hospital, Chhibramau), Hardoi (100-bed L2 hospital), Hapur (100-bed combined district hospital) and Varanasi (100-bed Lal Bahadur Shastri Hospital).

According to Basit, there were another nine DRDO sites where 1,000 LPM oxygen generation plants will be set up. These sites, he said were, Azamgarh (212-bed divisional district hospital), Bareilly (300bed divisional Covid hospital), Basti (300-bed district hospital), Sultanpur (226-bed district male hospital), Lalipur (200bed Manyawar Kanshiram combined hospital), Kannauj (200-bed district combined hospital), Sitapur (213-bed district hospital), Ghaziabad (166bed MMG district hospital) and Moradabad (187-bed district combined hospital).

The other four sites where the HITES has got the responsibility to operationalize oxygen plants are – Aligarh (340-bed Pt DDU combined hospital), Prayagraj (156-bed Moti Lal Nehru Hospital), Pratapgarh (200-bed district hospital) and Azamgarh (212-bed divisional district hospital).

“The NHAI will complete the civil and electrical works at all the 25 sites assigned to it within a week,” Basit claimed, pointing out, “The NHAI, with assistance from PNC Infra, helped DRDO set up and operationalize an oxygen plant for Atal Bihari Vajpayee Covid hospital at Shilp Gram in Lucknow in a record time.”