Tata Memorial Centre gives 92 O2 concentrators to Admin

Varanasi: The Tata Memorial Centre (TMC), an autonomous grant-in-aid institution under the department of atomic energy, has provided 92 oxygen concentrators to the Varanasi district administration. A total of 150 oxygen concentrators will be made available through TMC in a phased manner.
The TMC runs two cancer hospitals — Homi Bhabha Cancer Hospital (HBCH) and Mahamana Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya Cancer Centre (MPMMCC) — in Varanasi. Both the units were inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on February 19, 2019.
Director of HBCH and MPMMMCC Dr Satyajit Pradhan handed over the oxygen concentrators to the divisional commissioner Deepak Agrawal at his camp office on Thursday. Chief administrative officer of the cancer hospitals, Madho Singh, deputy director of HBCH Dr. BK Mishra and assistant medical officer of Dr. Aakash Anand were present on the occasion.
Spokesperson of the cancer hospitals Akhilesh Pandey said that the consignment was sent by the TMC, Mumbai to be used for the benefit of Covid patients of Varanasi and adjoining districts. Soon, 58 more oxygen concentrators would be handed over to the district administration, thereby contributing a total of 150 such equipment.
Appreciating the contribution, the commissioner said that it would help a lot in making available oxygen in time to the Covid patients in Varanasi and other adjoining districts. The DRDO Covid Hospital, SSH and Trauma Centre of BHU Homi Bhabha Cancer Hospital and other government and private hospitals now have adequate treatment facilities for Covid in Varanasi. These oxygen concentrators will be used for timely delivery of oxygen to Covid patients at community health centres in the districts of Jaunpur, Ghazipur, Ballia, Chandauli so that their condition can improve promptly, he said. Deputy director of the Centre for Cancer Epidemiology and officer-in-charge of TMC Varanasi, Dr. Pankaj Chaturvedi said, “In the second wave of Corona, we saw that Covid patients needed medicines for better treatment, ICU beds and they are having problems due to lack of timely availability of oxygen. In such a situation, we decided that we should get help from Indian donors living abroad. In this work, Dr Naresh Ramarajan and Gitika Srivastava, the founders of Navya, have played a key role in collecting medical equipment from donors in the US. These medical equipment are now being transported to every nook and corner of the country.”
According to him, apart from providing treatment to cancer patients, the TMC is also playing an important role in the fight against Corona across the country. Keeping in view, the increasing number of Covid cases across the country and the challenge of limited resources for treatment, the TMC led by the director Dr. RA Badwe started working on a war footing to contribute to the national efforts in fighting the pandemic.
According to the TMC officials, under this arrangement, US-based NGO Community Partners International, Yusuf & Farida Hameed Foundation, Presbyterian Hospital in New York and other donors of Indian origin living in the US, as also Navya, an organization working with TMC to provide online cancer opinion, came forward to provide medical equipment to TMC.
As a result, in a very short time, over 3,800 oxygen concentrators, three lakh N-95 masks and other medical equipment reached Mumbai by a FedEx 777 special cargo aircraft. These medical equipment are being transported to state government administrations and various hospitals across the country through TMC’s units such as, BBCI Guwahati, HBCH Sangrur, HBCHRC Visakhapatnam, HBCH Varanasi, MPMMCC Varanasi, ACTREC Navi Mumbai and TMH Mumbai.
Prof. Girish Chinnaswamy of the department of paediatric oncology, TMH is playing a crucial role in coordination of the pan-India distribution activity of the equipment.