Nagpur district is already facing the problem of bed shortage for rising number of COVID 19 patients. Now, the issue of supply of oxygen may haunt the administration though the situation is stable at this juncture. “Most COVID-19 patients are in need of oxygen and after hard efforts from supplier to provide more oxygen the situation may become bad,” say experts. Recently, the demand rose almost by 10 times. Suppose one hospital previously was buying 100 oxygen cylinders from the supplier. Now the same hospital is demanding 1,000 cylinders. Dr Rajendra Shingane, Minister of Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) spoke to ‘The Hitavada’ on phone on this issue.

 

He said, at this juncture the situation is under control, and nobody should get panicked on the issue of oxygen supply. FDA is the monitoring agency as far as supply of oxygen is concerned, he added. According to a Minister, everything is being streamlined so that in coming days oxygen supply should not create any problem. Tariq Patel of Jubilee Gas told ‘The Hitavada’, “The status of oxygen supply was very bad 4-5 days ago. But now the Government is planning to bring oxygen from Bhilai that may resolve the issue for the time being. It will not end the problem as the demand is constantly increasing.” In Nagpur there are three suppliers -- Jubilee Gas of Tariq Patel, Rukmani Gas and Aditya Gas. The Goyals, who own Aditya Gas, have their plant in Butibori named Inox that has liquid oxygen.

 

It is the only plant in Central India of that kind. All these three suppliers used to supply to whole Vidarbha. After Nagpur started facing spike in coronavirus cases and with more people getting hospitalised, the three suppliers had no choice than to concentrate only in Nagpur. These suppliers and their workers are working almost for 20 hours. Though they are selling the cylinders, their immense contribution to the fight against coronavirus can’t be ignored. They are not expected to work for 20 hours, but oxygen is playing vital role in saving the people from this dreaded virus and its supply has become the necessity. According to Patel, the supply is needed but unlike other products, oxygen has some different peculiar elements.

 

One can’t produce oxygen with immediate effect. Before the final product gets ready it has to go through several procedures. Dr Ashok Arbat, President of Vidarbha Hospitals Association (VHA) and Dr Anup Marar, Convenor to VHA, agreed to what Patel said. They explained, “Be it Government or private, all hospitals are facing oxygen crunch. We keep demanding oxygen from the suppliers sometimes to have additional stock because we don’t want people to die of want of oxygen. General patient do need oxygen though in less quantity. Once the same patient is put under ventilator the consumption of oxygen starts rising.” Considering the plight of Oxygen suppliers recently Collector Ravindra Thakare has issued an order asking hospitals to arrange their respective transport for the supply of oxygen upto their hospitals. This has made the suppliers heave a sigh of relief to some extent.