By Jayant Sarnaik | Project Leader
Dear Supporter,
First and foremost we are grateful to GlobalGiving for selecting us for a grant award of USD 20,000 to set up Oxygen Concentrator machines in areas facing acute shortage of medical oxygen as an outcome of second wave of Corona virus infection that devastated health infrastructure in India. By the time, the grant arrived, the search for developing new processes and equipment for manufacturing of oxygen concentrators at local level in our project region- Pune district had gathered significant pace among the engineering fraternity.We made an effort in the last quarter to map innovation and capacity development in indigneous manufacturing of oxygen concentrators in industrial zones of Pune. This was an important exercise considering the bottlenecks faced by many small and medium manufacturers of Oxygen concentrators across India in procuring critical items such as molecular sieve or oxygen detection devices specially made for this purpose.
Quite a few new processes were developed to make on-site generation of high quality medical oxygen possible. One of those processes involved cracking of Hydrogen Peroxide for continuous generation of Oxygen at the site. Our team also made a visit to Innovation incubator set up by National Chemical Laboratory where a low cost oxygen concentrator was being developed. These visits made our team conversant with the terminology used commonly in this field as well to choose vendors judiciously so that we can maximize the impact of our work and serve large number of patients in the grant award money.
We also assessed the feasibility of repairing an old imported oxygen concentrator at one local engineering workshop and decided not to go ahead with the repair work as it involved depending on imported items.
We are now well positioned to source six Oxygen concentrators of 10 liters/ minute capacity as the vendors have been finalized. We plan to deploy these first lot of Oxygen concentrators at Public Health Centers in villages located in 30 Kms radius of Pune city. in the next quarter.
We have taken a cautious approach while implementing activities of this project as we truly understand the value of your support and the difference between urgent and important.
Thanks for putting your trust in our capacity to take on challenges beyond our core skill set.
Best
Jayant Sarnaik
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