Adedayo Adejobi
How crucial is your product to the health value chain and most crucially in this time of the global pandemic?
Oxygen is the most crucial and critical supply in the treatment and management of COVID-19 patients.TheCOVID-19weakensthelungs(which makes breathing difficult or sometimes almost impossible) the patient requires the assistance of supplementary oxygen to help fight the infection. This supplementary oxygen are provided in small canister of liquid oxygen.
Since the breakout of the COVID-19
Wedonothaveenoughventilators,butwehave enough oxygen and are able to supply enough to Lagos hospitals weekly at the moment.
Your Ilesa oxygen plant is said to be the largest in the country.This could possibly take care of all the states in South-west and middle belt. Is that also in its full use at the moment?
Our Lagos plant has a large capacity- but our Ilesa plant can adequately cater for the south western states and middle belts. Ilesa supplies extend to Ilorin, Shaki, Ibadan, Owo, Ikirun,
Ogbomoso, Benin, Akure, Ondo, Lokoja, Oyo, Abuja etc.
Whilst it was operational, the demands for oxygen in this area were adequately met. We stopped operation due to myriad of issues, but largely due to insecurity.
Oxygen is an essential medical therapy that is poorly available in Nigeria and globally. Do you think the quality of oxygen therapy in Nigerian hospitals, including access to oxygen equipment, equipment functionality, healthcare worker knowledge and appropriateness of use are sufficient and at par with global best practice?
The quality of oxygen globally is uniform. Some are medical oxygen whilst some serve as industrial use mostly due to level of purity. We produce medical and industrial oxygen.
The means by which oxygen is administered and dispensed at medical facilities is proportional to the level of technology available at those facilities. But overall oxygen administration and dispensation has improved a lot in our health care facilities. We can do more with oxygen equipment facilities and machines like incubator which is critical in lowering infant mortality rate as it helps babies get through survival stage.
More so, ventilators at this crucial moment assist COVID-19 patients to maintain respiratory function. The use of oxygen is so critical and crucial in the health care delivery sector. We’ve ramped up production to meet the demand.
Your product is a sort of lifeline and you must be swamped with orders, because internationally that’s what’s happening. But do you think there might be demand for what you are doing outside Nigeria-even if the problem would be how you would get it to them?
The demand for oxygen is inelastic .Oxygen is vital part of health care delivery system. Oxygen also plays vital role in industrialisation, construction and other ancillary services. Nigeria is a blessed nation- our neighbours have benefited from us greatly some of their oxygen need are met from here.