Bikaner’s Oxy-mitra model gets praise from PM
Amid the crippling oxygen shortage in the country, Bikaner district administration adopted innovative ways to save oxygen and saved more lives, which recently drew praise from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Prime Minister appreciated the efforts put in by 13 district collectors in the country to manage the pandemic and associated challenges recently, which included the model adopted by the Bikaner administration.
In a letter, Rajesh Bhushan, secretary of the department of health and family welfare, has advised health secretaries of states and UTS, along with district collectors across the country, to include the innovations and best practices in Covid-19 management in their respective districts.
HT has a copy of the letter. On May 18 and 20, the Prime Minister, in his interaction with states, talked to district collectors and municipal commissioners regarding public health response to Covid management . Five district collectors of Rajasthan were chosen for the with the Prime Minister. The idea was to share the best practices and to learn from each others’ work and emulate them to check the pandemic.
Bikaner district collector Namit Mehta took the opportunity to brief the Prime Minister about the protocol and practices adopted in his district to curb the Covid-19 cases and overall management. He told the Prime Minister about Oxy-mitra scheme. Under the scheme, the district administration has deployed 200 ‘oxygen mitras (volunteers)’ to monitor oxygen usage in wards of Covid care facilities, resulting in saving of over 200 oxygen cylinders per day. The practices reduced the usage of oxygen from 100 cylinders per hour to 30 per hour, thus helping save 70 cylinders per hour, out of 1800 cylinders used in a day, he said.
The Prime Minister praised the district administration’s policy of deploying ‘oxygen mitras. He also applauded the induction of mobile OPD at block level to provide non-covid essential services offered by the Bikaner district administration in villages.
Reacting over the issue, Mehta told HT: “The administration has put in place a melange of best practices, spanning from correct identification of patients as per oxygen requirement, monitoring the correct oxygen use based on actual need and forecasting the demand based on requirement to the checks on leakages in supply system and irregularities.” BIKANER: