New Delhi: India's prominent healthcare bodies on Tuesday appealed to the government to put an old roster system in place for oxygen supply, directly from vendors to hospital and desist individuals holding cylinders at home and black marketing.
Association of Healthcare Providers-India (AHPI), Consortium of Accredited Healthcare Organisations (CAHO), IMA Hospital Board and Delhi Nursing Home Forum have formed a COVID coordination committee to mitigate the traumatic situation due to the second wave.
"The committee aims to improve synergy between different agencies for ensuring uninterrupted oxygen supply and proper care of COVID patients," an official told ETV Bharat.
The committee emphasised that the single most important medicine for the present COVID strain in the second wave is oxygen and given the shortage of resources, there is an urgent need to improve synergy between agencies to minimise fatalities.
The second wave of COVID-19 is found to affect the lungs much more, to the extent that the requirement of oxygen is almost 2 to 3 times as compared to what was consumed during the first wave last year. This has resulted in a shortage of medical oxygen.
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"When patients are scrambling for hospital beds, the hospital and nursing homes are unable to take fresh admission, just because there is no guarantee of oxygen supply. The country in general and Delhi NCR in particular, is passing through one of the worst phases in respect of suffering by population on account of COVID pandemic," the official said.
The committee in its recommendations told the government that the erstwhile system of vendors supplying oxygen was disrupted by the reallocation of vendors to different hospitals.
"This has created big confusion. Vendors are no more supplying to small hospitals and asking them to collect oxygen cylinders from their sites. Hospitals as such are putting their bulk of time in procuring oxygen rather than care of patients. A new trend has also emerged where individuals are rushing to vendors and buying oxygen cylinders to be hoarded at home," the committee said in its recommendations to the government.
It further urged the government to restore the old system of vendors allotment and restricting individuals collecting from them.
The committee also observed that governments are issuing various circulars asking for various compliances to the extent where hospitals/nursing homes are being threatened for closure.
"There cannot be the worst timing of issuing such circulars as we have an acute shortage of hospital beds. Authorities are requested to avoid issuing such orders during the current pandemic phase," the committee said in its recommendations.
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It may be mentioned here that the cost of per oxygen cylinder is Rs 200-300. But some vendors are charging more.
"Liquid oxygen being diverted to big hospitals due to big contacts whereas small nursing homes are fighting and helping among themselves. Poor patients who can't approach big hospitals, get admitted in small nursing homes with no oxygen and subsequently they suffer, " the official said.
Significantly, the government is also aware of the ongoing hoarding and black marketing of oxygen cylinders.
"All hospitals need to make judicious use of oxygen. At the same time, we need to stop hoarding and black-marketing of oxygen cylinders," said Piyush Goyal, additional secretary in the Union Home Ministry.
Interestingly, the Home Ministry, with support from the Ministry of Road Transport and Highway (MoRTH), has also installed a GPS tracking device for oxygen tankers and to monitor the vehicles on a single dashboard
"With the GPS system, we will be able to trace the movements of tankers turn around," added Goyal.
