This archive report was first published on 3 May 2021.
BOC Kenya, the country's largest supplier of medical, industrial, and special gases, is struggling to meet the rising demand for medical oxygen amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to BOC Kenya's Managing Director Marion Mwangi, the company's plants have been running almost nonstop since March 2020, when the country reported its first case of coronavirus, with imports of medical-grade oxygen increasing to keep up with the rising demand.
As of March 2020, the demand for medical oxygen doubled to 880 tonnes monthly, compared to a month earlier, with only 60% of the country's 50,000 medical cylinders in circulation.
BOC Kenya, which owns Kenya's only Air Separation Unit (ASU), capable of producing liquid oxygen to a purity of 99.95%, has been importing the commodity from Singapore, Dubai, or Mauritius to bridge the deficit in supply weekly.
However, Mwangi warned that if the critical cases hit over 500, the oxygen crisis would worsen, putting pressure on hospitals with inadequate facilities to handle critical-care patients.
She also expressed concerns about the situation in India, a country facing one of the worst COVID-19 crises in the world, where oxygen is in short supply.
BOC Kenya has been incurring high costs of importation to supplement local production of medical oxygen, which Mwangi said it could not pass to customers, with the company paying more than Sh63 million to the Kenya Revenue Authority in taxes for the imports.
Despite the challenges, Mwangi emphasized the importance of investing in the repair of oxygen plants and training bio-medics to repair these plants, noting that the State had started mapping them out.
