Addis Ababa City Administration has received 100 electrical oxygen extractor machines from Bamacon Engineering PLC, a construction firm in Addis Ababa.
Engineer Takele Uma, mayor of Addis Ababa received the donation in a handover event at the mayor’s office compound on Wednesday, August 12.
Mayor Takele Uma thanked BamaCon PLC for the machines which he said can be used to solve oxygen support shortages in Coronavirus treatment centers in the city.
“The donation of the oxygen concentrators means a lot to the city in need of oxygen for COVID-19 patients, ” said the mayor.
Oxygen is used to give medical care for COVID-19 patients, who require additional oxygen support to breathe as their condition gets worse.
Ethiopian hospitals have long been challenged with oxygen shortages. Reports suggest that oxygen is available for less than half of the hospitals and health care centers across Ethiopia.
Weeks ago Millennium Hall, a temporary medical care center for coronavirus patients in Addis Ababa notified that it will no longer accept patients who need oxygen support as all the oxygen equipped beds have been taken.
Girma Gelaw, Managing director at BamaCon Engineering said that the need for medical oxygen in the city motivated his company to purchase the machines that could extract oxygen directly from the environment with 95 percent efficiency.
The manager also said that the machines operate with electric power and 100 of them can deliver oxygen for two hundred patients at a time.
In addition to the machines, the city received a total of 26, 480,000 birr assistance from USAID and Save The Children, which will be distributed to 4,429 households in Addis Ababa in three months.
