In the midst of all the Oxygen crisis in India, there's one
state that's standing out,
one state with a surplus of oxygen amidst a
mounting Covid crisis and no points for
guessing
that state is Kerala. Kerala has actually
increased its oxygen availability by 58
percent over the last year.
So how is India’s only oxygen surplus
state managing the crisis
and why can't their model be followed by
other states?
The Oxygen refilling units in Kerala is one of the reasons the
state,
despite a high number of cases is an
oxygen surplus state.
Unlike many states especially in the
North. Since the start of the pandemic
Kerala almost doubled the air separation
units revamping six of them and today
all 11 of them are running at full capacity according
to the deputy chief controller of
explosives, Dr. Venugopal.
The Inox oxygen facility which is the
biggest in the state used to provide almost 40 percent of its
149 metric tons capacity
to industries till 2020. And now
it is fully delivering its capacity, only to hospitals.
At Thiruvananthapuram medical college
the storage capacity
has almost been doubled from 20 kilo
liters of liquid medical oxygen to 40
kiloliters of liquid medical oxygen.
So what's the Kerala model? After the
first Covidwave the state focused on
augmenting capacity,
rationalizing use, preparing for the
crisis that a second wave
could bring. Key government hospitals
have additional storage capacities
installed while the state increased its oxygen
availability by 58 %
within one year.
“Even before October
when we reached a peak we had this issue
we knew that our oxygen capacity would
be
low so what we did was, that the
government
spent a lot of investment on oxygen
Plants. You know the majority of the
ICU beds are actually in
medical colleges. So you take 10 medical
colleges, all the 10 medical colleges
are now having at least two liquid
oxygen plants.” says K Santhosh, Assistant Superintendent.
Oxygen production in Kerala at nearly
220 metric tons is more than double the
state's own demand.
So it has been able to send oxygen to
Tamilnadu, Karnataka, and Goa.
Source: NDTV India.
