After six years, false starts, Kitui gets oxygen plant

After a six-year wait punctuated by Covid-19 deaths due to insufficient oxygen at health facilities, the first-ever oxygen plant has been established in Kitui.

It cost Sh22,000,000 (USD 200,000.

Although in October 2016, Kitui chief officer for health Fredrick Muli announced the county government was at the time putting up an oxygen plant and a blood transfusion centre for Sh15 million.

Muli was quoted then saying the equipment for the oxygen plant had been brought in and the work was set to completed before long.

But residents had to wait until Tuesday this week when an oxygen plant facilitated by donor support was launched.

Since the Sh22 million oxygen plant commissioned this week was entirely funded by external sponsors, little is known of the equipment for a similar project that was acquired by the county government in 2016.

It is not clear what became of that project.

On Tuesday, the completed oxygen plant to combat Covid-19 was commissioned and handed over by Vaneshree Naidoo, the programme director of operation C19, at the Climate Fund Managers NGO.

She unveiled the plaque, cutting the tape and then presenting a symbolic key to the Kitui CEC for Health Dr Winnie Kitetu.

Dr Kitetu said with the establishment of the oxygen plant, she was relieved that bad publicity about Kitui hospital associated with deaths due to lack of oxygen had effectively been relegated to the past.

The CEC said at the height of Covid-19, the demand for oxygen was so high at the County referral Hospital that some patients who arrived in critical condition perished, making for very bad publicity.

She disclosed that acquiring the oxygen gas from the regular British Oxygen Company for Covid-19 came at a high cost that county government struggled as the demand was too high in health facilities.

Dr Kitetu said in 2021 Kitui county owed Sh3 million to BOC The company terminated the supply of oxygen when it was needed most by Covid-19 patients. 

Alongside the EU, the Dutch Fund for Climate and Development and the Kenyans Epicentre Africa Engineering firm, Climate Fund Managers financed and facilitated construction of the oxygen plant at the Kitui County Referral Hospital.

Naidoo presided on the commissioning of the plant that has the capacity to produce 300 litres of oxygen in a minute.

She said the Sh22,000,000 (USD 200,000) oxygen plant was a Covid-19 mitigation initiative. She said it was a top-up to other climate change mitigations projects in water provision implemented in Kitui.

Others who attended the occasion were Eng. Mary Njue  who is the Epicenter Africa engineering managing director and the firm’s chairman James Ngomeli.

(Edited by V. Graham)