MADURAI: An oxygen plant with a capacity to generate 250 litres of gaseous oxygen per minute was installed at Madurai Railway Hospital on Saturday.
This is the second oxygen generation plant in the city after the one in Government Rajaji Hospital.
The third oxygen plant in the city with a capacity of 200 litres per minute will be commissioned at the GRH on Sunday (June 27).
The generator at the railway hospital established at Rs 50 lakh was inaugurated by Madurai divisional railway manager V R Lenin.
It is the first oxygen generator in a railway hospital in Southern Railway.
Hospital sources said that the generator will suck air, remove moisture, segregate nitrogen from oxygen and supply oxygen to patients in need through two large cylinders.
Madurai Railway Hospital has 105 beds and all of them are supported by centralised oxygen supply.
Eighty five of these beds are dedicated for Covid-19 patients in addition to a 14-bed non-oxygen supported isolation ward.
Though the hospital has a one kilo litre liquid oxygen plant and oxygen cylinders, it faced difficulty in buying oxygen through tankers during the second wave of Covid-19 when more patients needed oxygen support.
This paved way for the installation of an oxygen generator in view of the preparedness for the third wave.
The generator that reached the hospital last Saturday was installed in less than a week.
Madurai Railway Hospital also has 18 oxygen concentrators – seven with a capacity of ten litres each and eleven with a capacity of five litres each – to meet the requirements of patients when the existing beds are overflowing.
Additional divisional railway manager Lalit Kumar Mansukhani and chief medical superintendent of the hospital Dr R J Bhaskar were among those present at the inauguration of the plant.