South African hospital uses medical oxygen supply solution for the first time

A team of doctors and engineers installed an oxygen concentrator that allowed the Madvaleni District Hospital to produce oxygen on its own, which is vital for patients admitted to local and nearby clinics in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The concentrator they installed was a pressure swing adsorption (PSA) oxygen generator. According to the description of the process on Wikipedia, PSA is based on the phenomenon that, under high pressure, gases tend to linger on solid surfaces, i.e. “adsorb”. The higher the pressure, the more gas is adsorbed. When the pressure drops, the gas is released or desorbed.
Lack of oxygen has been a major problem during the Covid-19 pandemic in several African countries. In Somalia, the World Health Organization increased the supply of oxygen to hospitals as part of a “strategic roadmap to increase the supply of oxygen to hospitals across the country.”
In addition, the high cost of medical oxygen has disproportionately affected patients in Nigeria, where patients cannot afford it, resulting in the death of many Covid-19 patients in hospitals, according to the Daily Trust. Subsequent results showed that Covid-19 has compounded the problems associated with obtaining medical oxygen.
During the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, as pressure on oxygen supplies increased in the Eastern Cape, health authorities often had to step in and use their own trucks…Read More »
The World Health Organization (WHO) has provided dual pressure swing adsorption (PSA) oxygen equipment to a hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia. read more”
Many patients are dying in hospitals because they cannot afford medical oxygen, a Daily Trust investigation found on Saturday. read more”
Namibia has announced it will lift import duties on oxygen to improve supplies amid a sharp increase in new Covid-19 cases and deaths. The move is part of the government’s efforts to…Read More »
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