NATIONAL MEDICAL OXYGEN GRID KEY IN STREAMLINING SUPPLIES: REPORT

REPORT SUGGESTS FOCUS ON SETTING UP STORAGE TANKS AND SITES FOR EXISTING AND

NEW HOSPITALS

NEW DELHI: The focus should be to set up storage tanks and sites for existing and new hospitals and not on mandatory pressure-swing absorption plants (PSA) in order to avoid a crisis similar to what India faced in the second wave of Covid-19 in 2021, a report by One Health Trust has recommended.

The report, titled “Blueprint for a National Medical Oxygen Grid in India”, has described ways to ensure that the attention medical oxygen has received can be leveraged to create a broader network – a grid of oxygen resources – that would not only protect against a future pandemic-related crisis but also prevent deaths related to childbirth, pneumonia in infants and small children, trauma, cardiovascular disease, and chronic pulmonary disease that are because of a lack of oxygen.

“The idea of a national or regional grid could work much like a blood bank that ensures that life-saving blood reaches everywhere. But to get there we need to both educate health care providers on the value of using medical oxygen to save lives, as well as organise health systems to ensure that a steady and reliable supply of high-quality oxygen is available in all corners of the world,” said Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist, World Health Organisation (WHO) as quoted in the report.

The blueprint, authored by health and experts including Ashwani Aggarwal, Indu Bhushan, Deepak Mahurkar, Rana Mehta, Susmita Roy, and Ramanan Laxminarayan, recommended the withdrawal of all notifications and regulations that necessitate new PSA plants for medical colleges or hospitals. Instead, they said, regulations need to be passed to set up storage tanks and sites for existing and new hospitals.

“Well-defined, quality and technical standards for storage of medical oxygen, oxygen cylinders, etc,” were among the suggestions.