Lanao del Sur province’s only COVID-19 hospital has reached its limit.
The state-run Amai Pakpak Medical Center (APMC) continues to operate beyond 100% capacity as of Monday, September 13. The previous week, its COVID-19 wards were 113% full while its intensive care unit was overstretched to 130%, according to Dr. Alinader Minalang, provincial health officer and provincial deputy chairman of Lanao del Sur’s COVID-19 inter-agency task force.
Dr. Shalimar Rakiin, APMC’s hospital chief, confirmed that the only hospital in the province and Marawi City capable of handling COVID-19 cases stopped admitting patients beginning Tuesday, September 7.
Rakiin said APMC has been overwhelmed by patients from Lanao del Sur, Lanao del Norte, Iligan City, and even from as far as Maguindanao province.
She said they have been advising ailing people to go elsewhere and seek help from rural health units.
No more oxygen
“We regret to notify the public that we are experiencing a shortage of medical oxygen supply since our suppliers can no longer provide our needed oxygen requirement,” Rakiin added.
Minalang said APMC’s medical oxygen requirement significantly increased from 200 tanks to nearly 500 tanks per day, and with the more transmissible Delta variant threatening the province, officials were still anticipating the worst.
He said Lanao del Sur had about 900 tanks of oxygen the last time he checked last week, and the supply was only good for two days.
“We are now running out of oxygen supply. This is our biggest challenge in this new surge,” Minalang said.
Lanao del Sur has been dependent on Cagayan de Oro and Iligan, cities in the neighboring Northern Mindanao region, for its oxygen supply. But the rising demand has overwhelmed the manufacturers there, Minalang said.
Aside from depleted stocks, he said, the refilling process was very slow, and the suppliers could no longer cope with the demand.
“Our oxygen tanks are still with the suppliers, and they are still refilling it,” Minalang said.
Lanao del Sur Governor Mamintal Adiong Jr. said the shortage was a problem being faced by local governments and hospitals elsewhere.
“We have the funds to purchase these but the problem is the limited supply. We are discussing the possibility of sourcing out medical oxygen from other areas where the cases of COVID-19 are relatively minimal,” Adiong said.
Dr. Ramon Moreno, chief of the Cagayan de Oro City-owned JR Borja Memorial General Hospital, said their daily requirement has reached 100 tanks, but many times, only 80 tanks were being delivered.
Filling up cylinders
Innar Jeffrey Quiblat, a marketing executive at the Cagayan de Oro Gas Corporation, said a standard medical grade tank would take about 30 minutes to fill at 1,800 pounds per square inch.
Quiblat said the number of oxygen tanks was insufficient to address the rising demand because local governments and hospitals had started stocking tanks of medical oxygen.
Quiblat said his company alone had to buy 900 more cylinders just to help augment the supplies of oxygen for Cagayan de Oro and Misamis Oriental.
“We have doubled our production capacity for medical-grade oxygen. As long as tanks arrive in our plant, we can refill it,” Quiblat said.
Dr. Willaflor Kindom Brito, a medical officer at the infectious disease cluster of the Department of Health (DOH) in Northern Mindanao, said the manufacturers in the region could refill as much as 7,000 cylinders a day.
“That is enough to meet the demand in the region,” Brito said.
The problem is that other areas outside Northern Mindanao have been getting their supplies from the region.
Dr. Ted Yu, Cagayan de Oro City Health Office medical officer, said local governments and hospitals from the Caraga region and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) were getting their medical oxygen supplies from Northern Mindanao.
Quiblat said several oxygen plants in Surigao and Butuan in the Caraga region were old, and cannot produce as fast as the modern plants in Northern Mindanao.
In Cagayan de Oro and Misamis Oriental, there are four major oxygen manufacturers: Pryce Gases Inc., Cagayan de Oro Gas Corporation, Linde Philippines, and Superior Gas and Equipment Company.
Quiblat said the only way to increase the supply of medical grade oxygen is for the companies to invest and buy new tanks, but the demand also pushed its prices up. – Rappler.com
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