Africa-Press – Tanzania. BENJAMIN Mkapa Hospital (BMH) has launched its first ever Oxygen plant as the government pledged to put up 57 similar factories in all zonal and regional referral hospitals in the 2022/23 financial year in efforts to save lives of people who are dying for lack of oxygen at different medical facilities.
The 1.1bn/- worth BMH oxygen plant was inaugurated officially yesterday by the Minister of Health Ummy Mwalimu, who paid tribute to the hospital for coming up with the facility that will provide oxygen at BMH and supply other gas cylinders to all hospitals in the central zone and others countrywide.
“The government under President Samia Suluhu Hassan is fully committed to offering high quality medical services at an affordable cost,’’ she said. The minister further reveled that in the 2022/23 financial year, the government had also allocated 28.9bn/- for the construction of a Radiotherapy Centre at BMH, adding that during the 2021/22 the government provided 2bn/- for the project.
According to Ms Mwalimu, apart from that centre, BMH will also have a Cardiac centre in order to reduce the burden to patients who are forced to travel to Dar es Salaam to access the service at the Jakaya Kikwete Cardiac Institute (JKCI).
Also she said, the government was also committed to seeing orthopedic and a neurological service available at BMH which she said was performing a wonderful job compared to other zonal hospitals countrywide.
“The government under President Samia wants to make sure that before July 2025, BMH is upgraded to the national hospital status like the Muhimbili National Hospital after all specialist services are available at the facility.
Regarding availability of oxygen services, Ms Mwalimu said that during her one year in office, President Samia had already established 14 oxygen plants in different regional referral hospitals. The hospitals according to her are Amana in Dar es Salaam, Ligula (Mtwara), Songea (Ruvuma), Mbeya, Dodoma, Geita, Manyara, shinyanga, Simiyu, Mara, Seuko-ture (Mwanza), Maweni (Kigoma), Sumbawanga (Rukwa) and Katavi.
“Our target is to have 57 similar plants in all regions in order to simplify access to this important medical service, she said. Earlier when presenting the BMH oxygen plant project, the hospital’s Managing Director, Dr Alphonce Chandika said the idea to come up with the factory came after the challenges of Covid-19 pandemic when the demand for oxygen increased.
According to him, before the pandemic, the hospital was using 200 gas cylinders each month but after the pandemic, BMH was forced to use the similar number within just a single day (24 hours) and that instead of spending 10m/- per month to procure the cylinders, the hospital was spending 10m/- per day.
The entire project, according to Dr Chandika, spent 1.5bn/- whereas 1bn/- was used to buy turbines from turkey and 260m/- was spent in buying 560 cylinders.
Also he added the building itself spent 232m/- and 66m/- was spent to purchase a lorry for supplying gas cylinders to other hospitals.
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