Express News Service
PATNA: A 2011-batch IAS officer has led an eight-hour ‘operation oxygen’ and saved the lives of 250 Covid-patients in Bihar’s Purnia district. On May 12, the district’s medical oxygen supply to hospitals was hardly enough to last a day.
At stake were the lives of 250 Covid patients, who were on oxygen support, 40 of them on the ventilator. It was around 7 am when IAS officer Rahul Kumar, District Magistrate of Purnia, got an SOS on the abysmal level of oxygen available in hospitals. “Those were the toughest few hours,” says Kumar. “We had to optimise internal resources and I had to alert some friends and colleagues posted in Katihar, Kishanganj and Supual as DMs and members of my dedicated district teams,” he recollects.