Aurangabad, April 21:
The Aurangabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has constituted a squad to perform oxygen audit by visiting government and private hospitals in the city. The decision has been taken after reviewing the severe shortage of oxygen in the city for the past 2-3 days.
It may be noted that the serious Covid patients are put on oxygen. However, the administration is struggling for the past many days to maintain the balance in supply and demand of oxygen. Two days ago, the private hospitals surprised the relatives of patients admitted under their telling them to shift their patients to other hospitals due to the non-availability of oxygen with them. Hence, the divisional commissioner Sunil Kendrekar and the district collector Sunil Chavan gave the responsibility of oxygen management in the city's hospitals to the AMC. The civic administration has been told to perform an audit of oxygen used in the hospitals and recommend necessary measures upon it. Acting upon the orders, the AMC administrator A K Pandey constituted a squad under the leadership of district mining officer Atul Daud.
Orders to the squad
The Covid patients are treated at the Dedicated Covid Hospitals and Dedicated Covid Health Centres in the city. These centres are equipped with oxygen facilities for the treatment of their patients. Hence the squad has been told to check the details of vehicles transporting the oxygen to these centres. The squad is ordered to check the weight of a vehicle with and without oxygen in it, the quantity of oxygen actually received etc. The squad will be visiting all the hospitals to perform the audit. The squad has also been instructed to check the leakages (if any) in oxygen supply through checking valves, joints, pipelines etc. Meanwhile, the order also stated to direct the hospitals to form a committee at the hospital level to plan oxygen supply in each ward, utility of oxygen etc. Hence the squad will evaluate the total stock of oxygen received in the city and its usage by different hospitals.