Background
The Ministry of Health convened a multi-stakeholder meeting to coordinate national arrangements for production, supply and distribution of medical oxygen across provincial and municipal health systems. The meeting endorsed a hub-and-spoke model that designates major hospitals as production and distribution hubs and surrounding hospitals or health centres as recipient spokes.
Participants emphasized routine operational monitoring and quality assurance for large-scale oxygen production equipment to maintain service continuity during demand surges. Health authorities were directed to collect consistent operational data from large-format oxygen generators to monitor capacity and identify technical faults.
Key Developments
- Meeting objectives were recorded as four priorities: strengthening supply chains through a hub-and-spoke design, improving preparedness and surge response, establishing technical standards and quality controls for oxygen equipment, and clarifying roles and responsibilities across central, provincial and development partners.
- The ministry instructed hubs to ensure adequate medical oxygen availability for both public and private health facilities and asked spokes to remunerate producing hospitals for supplied oxygen, with those payments intended to support maintenance and management of production equipment.
- Operational data collection and consistent reporting from large oxygen generators were highlighted to enable assessment of performance, capacity and recurring problems during equipment operation.
- Attendees included 36 participants from 25 municipalities and provinces, representing the Department of Health Services, hospital leadership and development partner CHAI.
Institutional Role
The Ministry of Health is acting as the coordinating authority to define roles between central health units, municipal/provincial hospitals and development partners for oxygen supply governance. Central-level leadership focused on assigning production responsibilities to larger hospitals while positioning surrounding facilities to receive supplies and report operational data.
Operational Implications
Hospitals designated as production hubs are expected to manage supply logistics and ensure quality of medical oxygen distributed to recipient facilities. Recipient hospitals and health centres were instructed to provide financial contributions to producing hospitals to fund ongoing maintenance, repairs, and operational management of oxygen generation equipment.
Source
Ministry of Health Facebook post, 29 May 2026: meeting on oxygen generator data use, supply and distribution; participants included Department of Health Services and CHAI.
