BSF enhances COVID-19 medical care facilities for serving, retired personnel

The BSF has bolstered its COVID-19 medical set up for its serving and retired personnel with the creation of 20 oxygenated beds at its hospitals and is "in the process" of setting up two small plants for producing the life-giving gas, officials said on Wednesday.

Ten oxygen beds each at two BSF COVID care centres located in Chhawla (southwest Delhi) and Tigri (south Delhi) of the national capital have been created recently, an official spokesperson said.

Out of these beds, he said, two have BiPAP (a non-invasive medical therapy) facility while four have ventilators.

Apart from these, 40 standalone oxygen beds have also been created at these two camps where the BSF serving and retired personnel, as well as their family members, can be admitted and treated by doctors and para-medical staff, he said.

The new facilities have been created as there was an "unprecedented surge in coronavirus infection cases."

"BSF personnel, both serving and retired, along with their families at this juncture require treatment and rehabilitation," the spokesperson said.

He said they are also in the process of setting up two mini oxygen generation plants in these two camps for ensuring seamless supply of oxygen to the patients.

The about 2.65 lakh personnel strong Border Security Force (BSF) is primarily tasked to guard Indian fronts with Pakistan and Bangladesh apart from rendering a variety of roles in the internal security domain of the country.

The force also has a 182 basic beds COVID care centre functioning at the Chhawla camp apart from eight 50-bedded composite hospitals and two 100-bedded hospitals across its countrywide formations that function as COVID health centres where mild infected persons can be isolated, he said.

The spokesperson said a 24x7 helpline has been made functional in Delhi that provides tele-consultation for COVID-19 treatment, ambulances to serving and retired personnel of the force and supplies general medicines.

According to official data updated till Tuesday, the border force has had 20,730 COVID-19 infection cases amongst its serving personnel out of which 1,551 are active.

A total of 83 personnel have succumbed to COVID-19 till now, another officer said.

The force has also vaccinated approximately 92 per cent of its manpower with the first dose of coronavirus vaccine while about 82 per cent of the staffers have got their second jab too, the second officer said.