The first time I came here, in 2009, the engineers showed me their new "oxygen plant", a small dedicated building for producing compressed oxygen. They were bottling it and then transporting the bottles to the operating theaters, ICU, and the patient wards as needed. The plan was to some day pipe the oxygen to each building, eliminating the bottles and the need to transport them. Even while making their own oxygen, their consumption was enough that they still imported additional bottles from Nairobi, but they had the space to double their production in their oxygen plant.
Then when I visited last year, their oxygen compressor was not working so they were importing all their oxygen bottles. Well, this year, the plant is still not operational. From what I understand, their compressor broke down due to a power failure or surge. Now, the South African company that sold it to them wants a king's ransom for the needed repairs. The hospital found a local company to do the repairs for much less, but the South African company insists that they must do the repairs for it to remain under warranty. (The needed repairs themselves aren't under warranty.) So repairs are currently at a standstill.
In the mean time, since we were here last year, they have been piping all the buildings with copper feed pipes and vacuum return pipes for the oxygen system. These pipes are hung along the outside of the buildings, going from building to building, with little tap-ins where needed.
No comments:
Post a Comment