Oxygen is the core of the battle against the coronavirus pandemic. Almost every district in many states is still struggling to supply the necessary amount of oxygen needed in their hospitals and some inter-state wars are being fought in Supreme Court as well.
In such a chaotic scenario where scores of people are succumbing to a gasp of oxygen, there are a few quick-thinking IAS officers who have been innovating to get their required quota of the ‘air of life’. One such officer is Mr. Abhishek Meena who re-commissioned an abandoned oxygen plant and landed a ‘goldmine’ without much effort and expenses.
SHUTTING DOWN OF THE PLANT
The private plant near Sonbhadra, Uttar Pradesh was abandoned about seven years ago, due to fluctuation in demand. Sonbhadra houses power and cement plants in the district where industrial oxygen was demanded for various purposes.
However, the demand was not regular and this kind of plant required assistance 24×7 as liquid oxygen was produced through the air and the materials were to be kept at -150/-160 degree Celsius.
“Electricity would also go off shutting down the plant entirely and was rebooted after eight hours and it was quite costly to renew the oxygen through the air. It was not economically viable to continue it, therefore the plant got shut down.”
ABANDONED PLANT TO THE RESCUE
When Covid19 struck the nation, and the lack of oxygen proved to be fatal for numerous people, the Sonbadhra district administration started transporting oxygen cylinders from Mirzapur covering a distance of almost 85-km. It used to often take them up to three hours to get their quota of oxygen.
“We were looking for easy availability of oxygen when someone told me about this abandoned plant. We called the owner of the plant who explained that it required repairing for which we provided him financial and technical assistance. With his help, we started re-commissioning the plant,” Sonbadhra DM, Mr. Abhishek Meena told Indian Masterminds.
Some parts of the plant were in working condition, while others required repairing for which he called in engineers from the nearby Hindalco Industries and took their assistance. New motors were put in and several testings were done.
After a few days of work, the plant is now successfully working, filling around 350 D-type cylinders and 50 B-type oxygen cylinders daily.
COVID STATUS IN SONBHADRA
Sonbhadra is the second-largest district by area of Uttar Pradesh. The sparse population of the district is scattered all across the district making the per-unit cost of service very high.
“If 50 people are living within 5 kilometers, it is easy but when 50 people are living 500 km away, it becomes difficult to provide any kind of service to them. Therefore, we are planning to appoint response teams to locate positive patients after they get tested, and detect their relatives, neighbors, and anyone who could have come in their contact in the last few days and get them tested,” Mr. Meena told Indian Masterminds.
The officer also appointed ASHA and ANM medical teams to do a thorough survey in every region. The helpers contacted around 1 lakh households and discovered 7000 symptomatic people.
“We quickly distributed medical kits equipped with necessary Covid19 medicines to them.” Moreover, Mr. Meena is planning to expand the oxygen supplies in around 30 beds in all the eight Community Health Centers by acquiring more oxygen plants from different industries, soon.
As of today, there are 1855 active cases in the district and people are slowly coming around to get themselves vaccinated too. It was hard to convince them to get vaccinated before but gradually, they have started understanding the importance of getting vaccinated.
