Internal Medicine

Kisumu County has 40 piped Oxygen outlets in its Covid-19 Isolation center at the Jaramogi Oginga Teaching and Referral Hospital (JOOTRH). The county has a 4000 kgs liquid oxygen tank and two oxygen generating machines producing a capacity of 375L per minute.
However, this supply is not enough, as oxygen which is considered a front-line drug in Covid management is still high in demand. Oxygen piping is currently only at JOOTRH in Kisumu.

The county is investing another 52 million shillings to purchase a new 500L per minute plant, already in the importation stage and will be set up in two months’ time.  Currently, there are 20 beds connected to oxygen with an average oxygen usage of 20,000 kgs daily. “Oxygen therapy is expensive, 15 liters of oxygen have to be administered to a patient per minute, while a liter of oxygen costs 40 cents per minute.” Dr. Gregory Ganda, the chief officer of health said. Ten days of a patient being on oxygen translates to about 86,000 shillings upfront. He added. “Covid is crazy, what one patient uses can run about ten theaters at the same time” He added painting a picture of the growing demand for Oxygen. This is against the background that there is a need to have piping at the Kisumu County referral hospital (KCRH) holding room and installation of liquid oxygen and another 250 L plant set up at the same premise.

Kisumu County has two sources of Oxygen supply, the Liquid, and PSA plant. Oxygen piping was done in   December 2020 while the PSA was installed in 2016. The county has average weekly storage of 3000 kg of oxygen. The plant has an existing service and maintenance contract of seven years, there are two more years remaining for the same.

Kisumu county has invested in covid containment considering that it should be able to have 760 hospitalizations, and 21 critical care interventions “No one has to be turned away, we have to survive the critical cases and be able to accommodate the rest of everybody else. “ Dr. Ganda added.  As demand for oxygen continues to rise in the lake region, economic bloc counties have put in place internal mechanisms to ensure that they cushion each other in the event of a surge.

JOOTRH has invested in equipment and space and human resources, to ensure appropriate intervention, ensuring that health workers are well kitted to minimize chances of transmission as well as not allowing covid to disrupt the rest of the hospital services.