100 new hospitals to have their own Oxygen plant under PM-CARES Fund!

New Delhi, April 16: In a major development, a meeting of Empowered Group 2 (EG2) was held on Thursday to review the availability of essential medical equipment and oxygen during the Covid-19 crisis. The group directed the health ministry to identify another 100 hospitals in far-flung locations for consideration of sanction for installation of Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) plants.

 

Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) plants manufacture oxygen and help hospitals become self-sufficient in their requirement for medical oxygen while also reducing the burden on the national grid for supply of medical oxygen.

 

 

Also, sources of medical oxygen and their production capacity have been mapped to match the requirement of states and an indicative framework has been developed to guide the states on the sources of medical oxygen.

 

 

4880 MT, 5619 MT and 6593 MT have been indicated to these 12 states - Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan- for meeting their projected demand as on 20th April, 25th April and 30th April, respectively.

 

The group also decided to float a tender for import of 50,000 MT of medical oxygen. The health ministry has been directed to finalise the tender and also explore sources for import identified by the missions of MEA.

 

 

There has been increasing demand for medical oxygen, especially from the 12 states with high burden of active COVID cases viz.– Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan.

 

While the demand in Maharashtra expected to beyond available production capacity of the state, states like Madhya Pradesh do not have any production capacity to meet their demand for medical oxygen. Besides, there is a trend of increasing demand in other oxygen producing states such as Gujarat, Karnataka, Rajasthan, etc.