PANDEMIC RELIEF EFFORTS An oxygen generator arriving at the Mater Hospital, Belfast.
of the concentrators by a pharmacist from Scotland from compressed gas and air purity specialist, iOQ services.” Each containerised oxygen
concentrator took about 12-14 weeks to assemble. “We had all eight completed and ready for use by the end of June last year,” said Nigel Keery. “By then we had emerged from the pandemic’s first wave, and were also spending time building up our liquid oxygen supply and our networks. We were also giving serious consideration as to how the concentrators might best be deployed and used across the region.” As it transpired, four of the eight concentrators – two of the ‘more complex’ type, and two of the more simplified design machines, were selected for priority use at a number of Belfast Health & Social Care Trust sites. Nigel Keery elaborated:
“Among the four are two embedded on hospital sites, but not connected, to serve as emergency standby supplies. We could not mix the 99 percentage pure liquid oxygen from the VIEs with the 93 percentage pure oxygen variant that the concentrators produce, so we decided to connect the concentrators to hospitals in locations ‘which can be isolated’ away from main buildings, to take a significant amount of product and effect the changeover from 99 to 93 per cent pure. They could thus accommodate a significant proportion of the demand from the VIE, enabling us to better manage our supply. To date,” he explained, “we haven’t had to actually use the two concentrators in question, but they remain on standby, but this is being reviewed by the Trust’s Medical Gases Safety Users Committee.”
Moved for secure holding Currently, two of the concentrators – one of each design – are installed at Musgrave Park Hospital. A further duplex unit is at the Mater Hospital, and there is one ‘single’ CPX machine serving the Cancer Centre at Belfast City Hospital. Nigel Keery explained that once assembled and tested, all eight concentrators had been moved to the Musgrave Park Hospital site for secure holding, before four of them were installed at the designated sites. The other four were ‘spare’, or to be allocated – from these three were selected for dispatch to India, with one retained ‘in reserve’ for use wherever in Northern Ireland it may be needed I next asked how his team and the Trust got involved in the supply of the three, so far unused, oxygen concentrators to India. He said: “There was a wider call, including from our Department of Health, in late April this year to NHS Trusts and medical equipment manufacturers across Northern Ireland for help in supplying vital kit and other assistance to India. We were asked what we were doing with our oxygen generators. Partly due to Brexit and the associated transport/security of equipment supply issues, and our need to maintain a resilient oxygen supply, and because COVID is still ongoing, we decided we could release three of the concentrators from our quota of eight. The five machines that would be left are all transportable, and sited in accessible locations from where we can transport them to wherever they are needed. Very quickly, we decided that supplying the three machines – all based on the Precision CPX design, and with a 500 l / min output – was the right thing to do.”
June 2021 Health Estate Journal 41
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