Oxygen plants being set up in 10 districts for serious patients

PESHAWAR: The health department is installing 10 oxygen plants to cater to the needs of Covid-19 patients besides strengthening intensive care services for seriously-ill or wounded patients in the district headquarters hospitals of the province.

“The installation process would be completed by end of June this year, which will not only help in survival of Covid-19 patients and also others critically sick people requiring medical oxygen,” said officials.

Nine plants would be installed in Kohat, Malakand, Haripur, Dir Upper, Dir Lower, Buner, Mardan, Charsadda and Nowshera while another, Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) oxygen plant, would be provided by the federal government.

The process will be completed by end of next month

“According to a recent report, 14 per cent of Covid-19 patients need medical oxygen. Lack of oxygen has already resulted in the death of six patients in Khyber Teaching Hospital in December last year after which the department has started work to make arrangements for adequate supply of oxygen,” said officials.

They said that persistent supply of oxygen was vital and its interruption could be fatal, therefore, they planned to resolve the issue on permanent basis.

They said that the province would procure liquid oxygen to be stored in big tankers for its supply to the patients. They added that liquid gas contained 99 per cent concentrated oxygen as it was the first source of oxygen supply.

Officials said that currently there were 17 central oxygen plants in the hospitals in the province. “A request by the health department is also being considered by the federal government to install Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) oxygen plant in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which is a large, central source of oxygen generation inside the facility,” they said.

They said that PSA was the best option because it was installed on the hospital’s premises from where medical oxygen was supplied to the wards. A booster compressor could be used to fill cylinders for distribution to other facilities, they added.

The doctors said that all hospitals in the province purchased oxygen from manufacturers. Liquid oxygen is first source of oxygen supply in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

They said that last month, health department directed the government hospitals to provide medical oxygen only to Covid-19 patients and other critically-ill patients needing emergency care. The directives were issued in view of shortage of oxygen, they added.

Liquid oxygen contained 99 per cent and PSA 93 per cent pure oxygen and can be supplied from the plant, a central storage located in the medical facility, for intra-hospital distribution of vaporised oxygen through a pipeline.

The PSA plant draws air from the environment and removes nitrogen to produce a continuous source of 93 per cent concentrated oxygen.

Officials said that oxygen should be compressed in cylinders and stored at a gas manufacturing plant or a PSA plant and then transported to health facilities.

Cylinders can be either installed directly within patient areas or by connecting groups of cylinders linked in parallel and then to supply oxygen to specific areas at the ward level.

The PSA plant, if provided by the centre, will be installed in Peshawar.

Meanwhile, Covid-19 claimed 26 more lives and infected 470 others in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Sunday.

A report by health department said that so far, the pandemic had killed 3,950 persons and infected 129,883 others in the province. Of the infected people 119,731 have recovered. There are 6,202 active patients in the province now.

The report said that 11 persons died of coronavirus in Peshawar, four each in Mardan and Dera Ismail Khan, two each in Swabi and Swat and one each in Bajaur, Bannu and Haripur.

Mardan recorded 117 new cases, Peshawar 78, Swat 32, Bajaur 31, Nowshera 20, Karak 19, Bannu 18, Buner and Battagram 17 each, Kohat 16 and Dera Ismail Khan registered 15 cases. The report said that 7,537 tests were conducted in the province.