Bihar oxygen crisis: Hospitals lack cryogenic tanks, not enough tankers to lift Central allotment

Even old and big hospitals like PMCH, IGIMS and the state’s first dedicated Covid-19 hospital NMCH don’t have the facility.

Bihar’s capital city, Patna, is among the few towns in the country with four medical college hospitals, besides hundreds of private nursing homes and other hospitals. However, amid the surge in Covid-19 patients, only three of such health facilities have cryogenic storage tank – a basic requirement for big hospitals, a central government report has found.

Patna: Health workers collect swab samples. (PTI)

As a result, full utilisation of hospital beds is not happening due to lack of oxygen supply, the report submitted to the Patna High Court.

According to the report, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (Patna), Employees’ State Insurance Corporation (ESIC) Hospital, and a private Paras Hospital in Patna have a cryogenic storage tank each for oxygen. Even old and big hospitals like PMCH, IGIMS and the state’s first dedicated Covid-19 hospital NMCH don’t have the facility. Creating new facilities will take time, the report added.

The government’s announcement to convert Medanta-Jai Prabha Hospital, which has come up on the government land, into a Covid hospital has also remained a non-starter.

The bench of Justice Charadhari Sharan Singh and Justice Mohit Kumar Shah was informed that Medianta did not have an oxygen supply facility at present, and it could at best ensure a 50-bed-facility. The facility created for Covid-19 patients at the Pataliputra Sports Complex also remains unused.

The report stated that the Patna Medical College Hospital (PMCH) has 1750 beds but nearly 1,000 remained unused for want of oxygen, while Bihar was unable to lift its full quota of 194 mt of oxygen allocated by the Centre. In fact, Bihar has hardly lifted around 100 mt of oxygen allocated under the central quota, as it does not have tankers.

At PMCH, just 450 beds out of 1750 are used for Covid-19 patients, while 50 are reserved for staff who may get infected and 250 for other ailments.

With most of the hospitals dependent on oxygen cylinders for the supply, the issue of hoarding and black-marketing also came up before the bench. Some of the voluntary organisations also said they need oxygen as they have cylinders to supply to the needy.

The three-member technical team had been constituted by the Centre on the directive of the Patna HC to examine the facilities available at the hospitals in Patna. The team was headed by Dr Umesh Kumar Bhadani of AIIMS, Patna.

Two days ago, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) wrote to chief minister Nitish Kumar about the selective supply of oxygen to some big private hospitals and said that lack of oxygen supply could force closure of around 90 private hospitals in the city, causing risk to the lives of admitted Covid and non-Covid patients.