State-run engineering firm BHEL on Monday said it has created oxygen cylinder filling capacity of 3,000 units per day at its Haridwar facility among other initiatives to fight COVID-19.
The second wave of the pandemic has rapidly developed into an unprecedented crisis for the nation, and in the midst of this grave national crisis, BHEL has been working on war footing to do its bit for the country and fellow citizens, a company statement said.
BHEL's plants, located at Bhopal and Haridwar, have responded to the situation with all possible resources at their command for supplying medical oxygen in and around their vicinity, it added.
BHEL Haridwar was having a capacity to produce 24,000 CuM oxygen per day for captive use through internal pipelines.
Seeing the acute shortage of medical oxygen in the country during mid-April, the plant created cylinder filling capacity for over 3,000 cylinders per day in a record time of just one week along with putting in the entire logistics and manpower, working day and night for handling over 3,000 cylinders a day, it stated This plant has so far filled almost 55,000 cylinders (over 3,00,000 CuM) of medical oxygen for meeting requirements of hospitals and district authorities, PSUs, armed forces in Uttarakhand, UP as well as Delhi NCR, thus saving thousands of lives in this crisis.
In one instance, swift action by this unit in supplying oxygen to the COVID Hospital in Tehri, Garhwal - in response to SOS calls when the main plant supplying these hospitals developed a fault, resulted in saving lives of 80 patients whose oxygen supply would otherwise have got cut off. Similarly, 158 cylinders despatched urgently to AIIMS, Rishikesh, against SOS call received from them, helped save many lives.
The BHEL's Bhopal plant has so far supplied over 1,53,000 cubic meters of oxygen (over 23,000 cylinders) to various Hospitals including Kasturba Hospital, AIIMS, Military Hospital, Railway Hospital and Police Hospital, in addition to various private Hospitals of Bhopal and Madhya Pradesh.
Further efforts are underway for creating oxygen production capacity in other units of the company too.
The BHEL stands firm in its resolve to contribute wholeheartedly in meeting the national requirements, it added.
