J&K receives 1st batch of 19 MT liquid medical oxygen in 3 crygoenic tankers

*6 fold increase in oxygen availability from in-house plants

Govind Sharma

JAMMU, June 5: For the first time, the Union Territory of J&K received on other day its first batch of 19 MT liquid medical oxygen (LMO) driven all the way from Air Liquide Panipat in 3 cryogenic tankers.
Transportation of LMO in the cryogenic tankers is one of the fastest and dependable means of supplying medical oxygen in case of emergencies and has been widely used across the country to cater the demand during the COVID pandemic.
Official sources revealed that to liaise closely with the stakeholders and ensure hassle free delivery of the liquid medical oxygen to the UT amid the its ever-growing requirements across the country during the aggressive second wave of the COVID pandemic, the J&K administration has specially stationed three senior police officers in States where factories of liquid medical oxygen exist.
Sources said that LG Manoj Sinha himself has been reviewing the day to day requirements of medical oxygen, medicines, other medical equipment across the UT and giving directions to the officials to augment the infrastructure and utilize all available means of resources at hand to mitigate the COVID affects on common people.
“It is, perhaps, because of this proactive and preemptive approach that the J&K Government saved the health infrastructures from crumbling and ensuring sufficient stocks of oxygen across all the hospitals in the UT while most states across the country were facing acute shortage of medical oxygen supply due to mounting positive cases,” they added.
Sources further revealed that since last year, Jammu and Kashmir had adopted the practice of continuously augmenting the health and allied infrastructure after gaps were identified in the first wave of COVID and as a result, substantial improvement has been seen in the oxygen generation capacity of the UT.
“As per official figures, the present overall oxygen generation capacity stands at 1.5 lakh cubic meters as compared to the consumption of only 103219 cubic meters which is only two-thirds of the total availability,’ they said, adding, the cumulative availability of oxygen in hospitals across the J&K from in-house oxygen generation plants has marked a six-fold increase from 8920 LPM in April 2021 to 53150 LPM in May 2021.
Sources said such substantial increase in the output has been a result of sustained push to medical infrastructure, especially the establishment of new oxygen plants across all major health institutions in the UT. They said six months back, J&K had only 19 Oxygen Generation Plants, however today the scenario has completely transformed with 40 Oxygen Generation Plants and another 39 plants with 33325 LPM capacity are coming up in next two months.