Defence PSUs, Ordinance Factories extends assistance to civil administration to fight surge in COVID  cases 

Express News Service
DELHI: Considering the rising need to provide medication to Covid infected patient’s, Defense Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs) and Ordnance Factory Board (OFB),  under the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has chipped with COVID Care facilities and are working to provide Oxygen plants to aid the civil administration/state governments across the country. 

MoD said on Sunday, “A 180-bed COVID care center, with ICU, oxygen, and ventilator support, set up by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) is functional in Bengaluru, Karnataka. The DPSU has also prepared a 250-bed facility in Bengaluru and handed over to municipal authorities under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). A 70-bed facility in Koraput, Odisha, and a 40-bed hospital in Nasik, Maharashtra are also operational.”

Work by HAL is underway to set up a 250-bed COVID care facility in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. It is expected to be operational in the first week of May. Further, HAL is planning to provide more ventilators and oxygen points at Bangalore and Lucknow.

“The OFB has chipped in with COVID care services, including oxygen beds, at their facilities in 25 places in Maharashtra, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Odisha and Uttarakhand,” added MoD.

The MoD informed, “OFB has reserved 813 beds out of total strength of 1,405, nearly 60 per cent of its existing strength for COVID-19 patients.”

These facilities are in Pune, Ambernath, Nagpur, Bhandara, Chanda, Varangaon and Bhusawal in Maharashtra and at Ishapore and Kolkata in West Bengal. Other places where OFB is providing its facilities for COVID care are Kanpur (2), Shahjahanpur (1) and Muradnagar (1) in Uttar Pradesh; Jabalpur (3), Itarsi (1) and Katni (1) in Madhya Pradesh; Avadi (1), Aruvankadu (1) and Tiruchirappalli (1) in Tamil Nadu; Medak (1) in Telangana; Dehradun (1) in Uttarakhand and Badmal (1) in Odisha.

Aiming to plug the scarcity of Oxygen at government hospitals several DPSUs such as Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL), BEML Limited, Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL), Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers (GRSE) Limited and MIDHANI, have also fast-tracked procurement of oxygen plants to deliver to local government hospitals in different states under CSR.