Srinagar: The Union Territory of Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir on Friday received its first batch of 19MT Liquid Medical Oxygen driven all the way from Air Liquide Panipat in 3 cryogenic tankers.
While giving details, official sources revealed that it was only after the relentless efforts of the officers who are pursuing the explicit directions from the top to get the allocated quota of LMO amid the ever-growing requirements of medical oxygen across the country during the aggressive second wave of the Covid pandemic.
“The UT administration has taken the job seriously and has tasked three senior police officers to station in states where factories of Liquid Medical Oxygen exist and to liaise closely with the stakeholders ensuring its hassle free delivery to the UT,” said the officials.
It may be mentioned here that Lieutenant Governor, Manoj Sinha 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 effects on common people.
“It was because of these proactive approaches that the J&K government saved the health infrastructures from crumbling and ensured 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,” said the officials.
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. 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 Lac Cubic Meters as compared to the Consumption of only 103219 Cubic Meters which is only two-thirds of the total availability.
Further, 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, revealed official sources.
Six months back, J&K only had 19 Oxygen Generation Plants, however today the scenario has completely transformed with 40 Oxygen Generation Plants already in operation and another 39 plants with 33325 LPM capacity coming up in next 2 months, the officials said.
