Mimika Regency Government Sends Letter To Freeport Asking For Medical Oxygen Assistance For COVID-19 Patients

Head of the Mimika Regency Health Office, Reynold Ubra (ANTARA/Evarianus Supar)

JAKARTA - The Mimika Regency Government, Papua has written to the management of PT Freeport Indonesia to request medical oxygen assistance due to the increasing number of COVID-19 patients with severe conditions being treated at the Mimika Regional Hospital in the last few days.

Head of the Mimika Health Service, Reynold Ubra in Timika, Monday, said some time ago during a meeting to discuss the implementation of micro-based PPKM in Mimika, PT Freeport Indonesia VP for Government Jonny Lingga representing PT Freeport management agreed to help with medical gas to Mimika Hospital.

Although currently there is an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases in the Freeport area, namely in Tembagapura and Kuala Kencana, most of the infected employees only experience mild and moderate symptoms.

"The Regent of Mimika has written to PT Freeport Indonesia to ask for oxygen or medical gas," Reynold said as quoted by Antara, Tuesday, July 13.

Mimika Hospital is known to have ordered medical gas or oxygen to Surabaya and Jakarta, but it takes weeks for delivery to Timika, while the available reserves are running low.

According to a report from the Director of the Mimika Hospital, Dr. Antonius Pasulu to the Mimika Health Office, it is known that one patient who uses a ventilator aid needs three to four tubes of oxygen per day.

"If there are 30 patients a day who must be assisted with oxygen, then the need for one day is 120 medical gas cylinders. In two days, there are 300 medical gas cylinders. That's only for patients in the COVID-19 isolation room. What if the number of patients explodes, such as Yesterday, just one day there were 17 patients who came in, so it is certain that the medical gas reserves will quickly run out," explained Reynold.

Currently in Timika there are companies that produce medical gas, but their capacity is limited to only producing 75 gas cylinders per day.

Mimika Hospital Director Antonius Pasulu some time ago said that his party needed a reserve of 1,000 oxygen cylinders for handling COVID-19 patients and other patients.

As of July 2, there has been an increase in the need for medical oxygen use at Mimika Hospital from 48 tubes to 90 tubes per day.

"One tube runs out in just 2 hours. While oxygen is the lifeblood of COVID-19 patients when saturation decreases. If oxygen is not filled for five minutes, the consequences can be fatal," said Antonius.