Setting up oxygen PSA plants in hospitals can become permanent solution: PIL in Delhi HC

New Delhi: A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has been moved in Delhi High Court seeking direction to the Central government and Delhi Government to issue mandatory guidelines for establishing the medical oxygen Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) plants in both public and private hospitals in a time-bound manner.

The petitioner, Ananya Kumar, a PhD scholar, who filed the plea through Advocates Vinay Kumar and Manan Aggarwal stated that at present due to shortage of medical oxygen in the hospitals that there is panic among the people.

Also Read:Oxygen Plants compulsory at all Medical Colleges: NMC Amends MBBS regulations

The petition said black marketing of medical oxygen is being done and some "shocking news" is also coming from various places of the country that people are hijacking the trucks carrying medical oxygen on their way to the hospitals.

"The big problem right now is that the excess supply of the medical oxygen that is there in the market is in East India, that is Odisha and Jharkhand, whereas the demand is mostly coming from Northern and Western India, that is Uttar Pradesh, Delhi among other places. Oxygen is an inflammable gas and to prevent accidents, it is stored and transported in cryogenic cylinders, but India does not have enough cryogenic cylinders. The main issue is that oxygen is a flammable material and cannot be transported regularly," the petition said.

The plea suggested PSA medical oxygen plants can become a permanent solution for all the problems which are being faced by the people in the present pandemic.

"That such a plant can come in varying capacities to generate oxygen, it employs a technology that absorbs nitrogen from ambient air to concentrate oxygen for supply to hospitals and oxygen thus generated can be supplied straight to the site through a dedicated pipeline. The PSA medical oxygen plants have an initial set-up cost, which depends on the capacity of the plant. The petitioner has been acquainted with the information from print and online media that a plant that can supply 24 cylinders worth of oxygen gas per day costs about Rs 33 Lakh to set up and can be completed in a couple of weeks," the petition stated.

It highlighted that the medical infrastructure has exhausted and the country is facing an acute shortage of medical oxygen leading to the death of many innocent people.

The matter is scheduled to be heard on Thursday by the bench of Justice DN Patel and Justice Jasmeet Singh.

Also Read: Delhi HC directs Govt to Come up with Policy to Allow Attendants of COVID patients