Oxygen crisis in Patna hospitals, says DM

PATNA: In an official admission of the oxygen shortage in Patna hospitals, DM Chandrashekhar Singh has written an SOS letter to the health department asking for an urgent audit by a group of experts of the demand and availability of oxygen at government hospitals such as PMCH, NMCH and IGIMS for its optimum utilization.
"Optimum utilization of available oxygen must be made, and there is an extreme need of assessing the actual requirement against the demand made by the government medical colleges and hospitals," reads the letter dated April 28.
"Thus, it's requested that an audit of total demand, actual need and available oxygen for its optimum utilisation be performed by a technical expert group at government medical colleges PMCH, NMCH and IGIMS so that available limited resources can be used in the best possible way," the letter adds.
In the letter written to health department principal secretary Pratyaya Amrit, the DM stated that the PMCH, NMCH and IGIMS are continuously pressing for 3,000 jumbo oxygen cylinders per day. Against their demand, PMCH and NMCH are provided with 1,000 oxygen cylinders each while IGIMS gets 600 cylinders per day.
According to the letter, the oxygen supply capacity in the Patna district is 7,000 cylinders per day while the current demand is much higher.
At these three government hospitals, around 800 beds are reserved for treatment of Covid-19 patients while there are around 2,000 beds in 90 private hospitals in Patna where Covid-19 patients are undergoing treatment.
The DM stated in his letter that these private hospitals are demanding around 4,000 oxygen cylinders per day.
He has further written that if the demand of district, sub-divisional and dedicated Covid-19 health centres are added to the demand by non-Covid hospitals then the oxygen availability becomes much less compared to the requirement.
As per the DM, a request is pending with the industries department to ensure the availability of 1,770 additional oxygen cylinders per day to hospitals in Patna and installation of liquid oxygen storage tanks at the government medical colleges and hospitals.
Incidentally, the letter came in the public domain within 24 hours of the IGIMS director submitting before the Patna high court on Wednesday that they need at least 400 to 600 additional oxygen cylinders daily for Covid-19 patients.
The HC had termed the state government’s oxygen supply action plan as a ‘farce’ during Wednesday’s hearing.
The director was among the first few people to write to the high court's special email address rgphccovidcomplain@gmail.com created for the masses to report the shortage of oxygen supply.
Earlier, the NMCH superintendent (in-charge) Dr Binod Kumar Singh had written to the health secretary on April 17 to relieve him of his duties as there is a shortage of oxygen supply due to its diversion to other hospitals by the district administration.
Even the ESIC hospital at Bihta and some other private hospitals have complained to the high court’s email id highlighting oxygen shortage.
As per an assessment mentioned by the Patna DM during a high-level meeting on April 15, there was a demand for at least 10,000 oxygen cylinders per day by hospitals. It was the same meeting at which the decision was taken to divert oxygen from industries to hospitals.