patna in an official admission of the oxygen shortage in patna hospitals dm chandrashekhar singh has written an sos letter to the health department asking for an urgent audit by a group of experts of the demand and availability of oxygen at government hospitals such as pmch nmch and igims for its optimum utilizationoptimum utilization of available oxygen must be made and there is an extreme need of assessing the actual requirement against the demand made by the government medical colleges and hospitals reads the letter dated april 28thus its requested that an audit of total demand actual need and available oxygen for its optimum utilisation be performed by a technical expert group at government medical colleges pmch nmch and igims so that available limited resources can be used in the best possible way the letter addsin the letter written to health department principal secretary pratyaya amrit the dm stated that the pmch nmch and igims are continuously pressing for 3000 jumbo oxygen cylinders per day against their demand pmch and nmch are provided with 1000 oxygen cylinders each while igims gets 600 cylinders per dayaccording to the letter the oxygen supply capacity in the patna district is 7000 cylinders per day while the current demand is much higherat these three government hospitals around 800 beds are reserved for treatment of covid19 patients while there are around 2000 beds in 90 private hospitals in patna where covid19 patients are undergoing treatmentthe dm stated in his letter that these private hospitals are demanding around 4000 oxygen cylinders per dayhe has further written that if the demand of district subdivisional and dedicated covid19 health centres are added to the demand by noncovid hospitals then the oxygen availability becomes much less compared to the requirementas per the dm a request is pending with the industries department to ensure the availability of 1770 additional oxygen cylinders per day to hospitals in patna and installation of liquid oxygen storage tanks at the government medical colleges and hospitalsincidentally the letter came in the public domain within 24 hours of the igims director submitting before the patna high court on wednesday that they need at least 400 to 600 additional oxygen cylinders daily for covid19 patientsthe hc had termed the state governments oxygen supply action plan as a farce during wednesdays hearingthe director was among the first few people to write to the high courts special email address rgphccovidcomplaingmailcom created for the masses to report the shortage of oxygen supplyearlier the nmch superintendent incharge dr binod kumar singh had written to the health secretary on april 17 to relieve him of his duties as there is a shortage of oxygen supply due to its diversion to other hospitals by the district administrationeven the esic hospital at bihta and some other private hospitals have complained to the high courts email id highlighting oxygen shortageas per an assessment mentioned by the patna dm during a highlevel meeting on april 15 there was a demand for at least 10000 oxygen