LAHORE: Under a mega project, the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef) will establish medical oxygen plants at four districts of the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.

It is said to be a pilot project to help bring down the mortality rate particularly among under five-year-old children diagnosed with pneumonia.

According to medical experts, the pediatric pneumonia is the single largest infectious cause of death in children worldwide and the lack of oxygen among children has further doubled the death rate.

Secondly, the provision of supply has also been a major issue that the government sector hospitals used to face, as per the experts.

Pilot project aims at reducing mortality rate among children diagnosed with pneumonia

They said the oxygen supply crisis had surfaced repeatedly during the peak seasons of Covid-19 when the hospitals faced its severe shortage and the rate of the life-saving gases increased manifold.

Consequently, an important decision was taken at a meeting held at the Directorate Health Services Punjab to address the issue by establishing the oxygen plants to ensure uninterrupted supply of medical gases.

DG Health Punjab Dr Haroon Jehangir, Unicef representative Dr Rana Mushtaq, Prof Tariq Bhutta and other officials concerned were present in the meeting.

Prof Tariq Bhutta told Dawn that the meeting also decided to start oxygen therapy of children living with pneumonia, declaring it vital to human life.

He said the children facing chronic lungs disease needed additional oxygen to survive. “Oxygen therapy is a treatment that provides a kid with supplemental, or extra oxygen”, he said.

Bhutta said oxygen gas plants were being established at the district headquarters hospitals of Muzaffargarh and Bahawalnagar to ensure provision of its supply on long-term basis.

He said the Unicef would provide heavy equipment, technical experts and trained allied staff to produce the medical oxygen at the plants.

The produced oxygen would be enough to meet the requirements of the hospitals of the two districts of the province, he said adding that it would be provided in two ways – by laying down pipes and through cylinders.

Highlighting the significance of the project, he said, a medical superintendent of DHQ Hospital Bahawalnagar shared some ‘disturbing’ figures saying the annual mortality rate among the under-five children in the district was recorded five per cent.

Prof Bhutta said in the developed countries it had been less than 0.5pc and declared that the high percentage of death rate in Punjab is a matter of serious concern.

He said another MS informed that the annual consumption of the medical oxygen in his DHQ hospital cost more than Rs10 million.

Another official, who attended the meeting, said the project would be replicated in other parts of the province at a later stage.

“The Unicef is giving it a final shape and the plant will start providing the medical oxygen soon,” he said.

Published in Dawn, April 22nd, 2022