No death due to oxygen shortage in Maharashtra: Health minister Rajesh

YB WEB DESK. Dated: 7/22/2021 12:01:31 PM


Mumbai, July 21 Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope on Wednesday claimed that there has been no death on account of shortage of oxygen in the state. He emphasised that there is no report which shows that a patient died due to lack of oxygen in Maharashtra. “Never has such an incident taken place in Maharashtra and there is no report in this regard. 100% industrial production was converted for liquid medical oxygen with purity ensured since we were committed to provide everyone with oxygen in the state. Even the Central government helped us when we were running short and gave us 200-300 MT of oxygen at the peak of the pandemic," he added. Rajesh Tope further added that the state has given an affidavit in this regard in the court as well. “This is a reality. We utilised all the oxygen that was being produced in the state from the industries for liquid medical oxygen. Logistic facilities were created for all districts and monitoring was done to see there is no theft for the industries. Its purity was maintained, and we did successful oxygen management and conservation. Efforts were made to ensure there is no oxygen wastage in the state," he said. His statement comes a day after the Union government told the Rajya Sabha that no deaths due to lack of oxygen were "specifically reported" by the states and Union Territories during the second Covid-19 wave this year. When asked about media reports on Covid-19 patients suffering due to lack of oxygen, he said that he had read about the conditions in various states and there could have been instances where patients could have died due to lack of oxygen. “I do not want to comment on that but at least in the limits of the state of Maharashtra, there was no case. There is no question of saying otherwise for we have said the same in the courts as well," he added. "Even at a time when the state was seeing 65,000 Covid-19 cases, we managed with 1700 MT of oxygen. By God’s grace, there was no mishap or accident or incident where the patient didn’t get oxygen,” said Rajesh Tope. The state health minister said Maharashtra's vaccine demand is not being met by the Centre. He added that per day vaccination capacity for the state is 10 lakh, however, it is getting 3 lakh doses. “They (Centre) made the provision of giving 200-300 MT of oxygen every day. We had requirements of drugs like Remdesivir and Amphotericin B in between and now for vaccination as well. We have been demanding more vaccines since Maharashtra has been one of the worst affected states in the country. Our vaccine demand is not being met by the Centre. It is our legitimate demand. Our per day vaccination capacity is 10 lakh but we are getting just 3 lakh and whatever we are getting we are utilising. But if we get more then it will be helpful as we could get herd immunity and then further relaxations could be given to ease the citizens.” he said.

 

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