Sharjah 24 – AFP: At the peak of Kenya's third wave of Covid-19 in March, hospitals -- buckling under the strain of the virus -- saw their oxygen reserves fizzle out.
Since then, they have been scrambling to increase capacity of the lifesaving element, fearing the nightmare scenario currently unfolding in India due to oxygen shortages.
On the roof of the Metropolitan Hospital, a 150-bed private institution that targets the middle class, a brand-new oxygen production unit has just been installed that is capable of producing up to 600 litres of the gas per minute.
Metropolitan CEO Kanyenje Gakombe said the hospital accelerated plans to produce its own oxygen after supplies were squeezed to the limit during the height of the third wave, fanned by the variants of the coronavirus first detected in Britain and South Africa.
In April Kenya registered a record 571 deaths, and the health ministry warned hospitals were overrun with fewer than 300 patients in the Intensive Care Unit and fewer than 2,000 hospitalised countrywide.
"The reserve dwindled, it decreased to the point where we were collecting oxygen 24/7," recalled Gakombe.
At one point "we were down to six hours of reserves and that was a very, very worrying situation."
The grey-haired doctor admits that in his 27 years at the helm of the facility, he had rarely worried about the oxygen supply which was "something we took for granted".
But where a typical patient uses "two to 15 litres" of oxygen per minute, a Covid patient requires "up to 60 litres", he said.
"We wanted to make sure we were self-sufficient, not dependent on third parties to provide us with the oxygen we needed," he said, referring to industry suppliers, like Kenya's gas manufacturer BOC.
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