Doctor’s prescription needed for buying oxygen or refilling cylinders

Lucknow: Recently, the Uttar Pradesh government has made it compulsory to produce a doctor’s prescription while buying oxygen or refilling cylinders.

Navneet Sehgal, additional chief secretary (information) stated that in order to stop the hoarding of oxygen cylinders at homes, such a decision had been finalized.

He further opined, “While we are continuously taking steps to ensure oxygen supply and it will not be possible to meet the rising demand if people begin hoarding oxygen at home in anticipation of an emergency. Oxygen will now be sold only if one presents a doctor’s prescription, even if it’s on WhatsApp”.

In order to make sure that there is no black-marketing, officials are posted at the oxygen filling centers.

Yogi Adityanath, the Chief Minister has stated that police should be deployed at the filling centers.

Sehgal exclaimed that 31 hospitals in the state are constructing air separators for manufacturing oxygen from the air and hence shall in this way lessen the dependency of liquid oxygen supply.

The plant shall start functioning within a couple of weeks. The center has allocated 1,500oxygen concentrators to the state for distributing them in the hospitals.

A patient shall get one concentrator each. In addition to this, it shall make sure that apart from the single concentrator the patient doesn’t need anymore.

The chief minister has directed the construction of the control room so that it can keep into account the availability of oxygen in the state. It is the responsibility of the food safety and drug administration department and home department to monitor the control room.

The industrial units that are using oxygen for its manufacture should convert the supply for medicinal use.

Factories that were involved in the manufacture of medical oxygen and were shut down shall be opened soon. Private hospitals should think of constructing their own oxygen plants.