New Delhi: Rising to the occasion, Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) has been working on war footing to ensure adequate supply of medical oxygen in and around the vicinity of their plants in Bhopal and Haridwar.

BHEL Haridwar plant was having a capacity to produce 24,000 cubic meters (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.

“This plant has so far filled almost 55,000 cylinders 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,” said BHEL in a statement.  

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 dispatched urgently to AIIMS, Rishikesh, against the emergency call received from them, helped save many lives.

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. BHEL stands firm in its resolve to contribute wholeheartedly in meeting the national requirements. /BI/