Twenty-five more oxygen generators will arrive in India from Europe over the next week to help ease the country’s severe medical oxygen supply crisis, according to people familiar with the situation.
The high-capacity generators, the majority of which are manufactured by Novair in France, produce medical oxygen from ambient air to feed a hospital’s oxygen system. The oxygen generators were purchased by three Indian companies, including an IT giant, who used their corporate social responsibility funds to purchase the high-capacity oxygen generators.
Officials in charge of coordinating foreign assistance and the import of medical equipment from other countries said the oxygen generators would be delivered on May 17th, with 17 coming from Novair’s manufacturing facility north of Paris and two from its Italian plant. Each of the plants can produce 24,000 litres of oxygen per hour.
On May 21, the Indian Air Force’s C-17 Globemaster III, a heavy-lift transport aircraft capable of carrying a payload of 77 tonnes, will pick up five more oxygen generators from France. The army intends to fly in another five generators from Paris, but the schedule has yet to be finalised, according to an official.
India has also secured a commitment for 420 metric tonnes of zeolite from another French firm, Arkema, according to an official. The company had agreed to ship 160 MT at first, but later changed its mind. When ambient air is forced under pressure through the molecular sieve of an oxygen concentrator, zeolite is used to absorb nitrogen.
These emergency supplies are in addition to those received from the European Union and its member states to assist India in dealing with record-breaking infections that have remained above 300,000 for weeks, according to officials.
Apart from the EU’s Euro 2.2 million emergency funding to WHO’s patient management and strengthening testing capacities in India, officials in New Delhi said India had received a significant portion of the offers from the EU, 17 EU member states, Norway, and Iceland, including items worth more than Euro 100 million.
Around 250 additional ventilators, oxygen concentrators, and Remdesivir vials are on the way. 12 oxygen plants, 1,700 ventilators, 1,500 oxygen concentrators, 1,300 cylinders, 70,000 Remdesivir vials, 20,000 monoclonal antibodies vials, and more than 210 tonnes of liquid medical oxygen have already been delivered to India. The major contributors were France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Italy, and Spain.
