IAS commissioner to monitor the oxygen supply from neighboring countries

“590 tons of gas were used for AP.”

The Andhra Pradesh government has dismissed two senior IAS officials and a retired bureaucrat to oversee oxygen supplies to facilities in three neighboring states following the tragedy at SVR Ruia government hospital in Tirupati, where the delay in the arrival of the oxygen tanker resulted in death from Sept. Patient.

HealthPrincipal Secretary Anil Kumar Singhal spoke to the media on Tuesday that officials would coordinate with officials in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Odisha to ensure that all of the required amounts of medical oxygen were received by the state on time.

He said that Special Chief Secretary Karikal Valaven (Tamil Nadu), Special Chief Secretary G. Anantha Ramu (Karnataka), and APPCB Chairman AK Parida (Odisha) would oversee the oxygen supply in the respective states.

Mr Singhal said the oxygen tanker, which was supposed to reach Tirupati by 5 p.m., had arrived late, which resulted in an interruption in the hospital’s life-saving gas supply for 15 minutes. Since the incident happened due to the late arrival of the oxygen tanker, which was being managed by a private company, the state government has decided to monitor things from now on, he said.

He said the state had withdrawn all of the 590 tons of medical oxygen allocated to it by the center and that the supply had been used in the past 24 hours. “We asked the center to allocate more oxygen,” he said.

Mr. Singhal said Eastern Naval Command would be called in to operate and maintain oxygen supply systems across the state. All of the state’s industrial oxygen cylinders are converted to medical oxygen cylinders in three to four days.

Bed availability

He said 6,304 of the 6,792 ICU beds in the state were occupied and that ICU beds were unavailable in some districts as of Tuesday afternoon. Of the 23,358 beds with oxygen facilities in 636 hospitals, 22,266 were occupied.

In the meantime, the state issued a corresponding GO on Tuesday. DGP D. Gautam Sawang was also asked to deploy police teams at eight oxygen facility locations in the three states to ensure that tankers are dispatched promptly. The police will provide the tankers with a green channel if necessary.

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