A life-saving oxygen generation plant with the capacity to fill up to 200 cylinders was officially opened on Thursday at the Tupua Tamasese Meaole National Hospital.

The commissioning of the plant was attended by the Minister for Health, Valasi Tafito Selesele, the New Zealand High Commissioner to Samoa, Dr. Trevor Matheson, the Acting Director General for Health, Tagaloa Dr. Robert Thomsen and senior public servants and members of the diplomatic corps.

Valasi, in his keynote address, said the project was over two years in the making and ends Samoa’s reliance on oxygen supplied from New Zealand and Pago Pago in American Samoa. 

The Minister said the Ministry of Health (M.O.H.) had limited refilling capacity since the late 1990s, but that issue has now been resolved with the commissioning of the plant. 

“Since the late 1990’s we had solely relied on an oxygen plant with a re-filling capacity of only 30 to 50 large oxygen cylinders per day,” he said. 

“As some of you may be aware, since 2019 the Ministry of Health has had to [resort to] the transporting of oxygen cylinders in part to Pago Pago via sea freight for refilling there, due to our greatly reduced capacity. 

“This new oxygen [generation] plant ensures sufficient capacity of refilling up to 200 oxygen cylinders per day.”

The new building that houses the generation plant was funded by the Samoa Government at the cost of $996,942.71 tala according the Minister, who added that New Zealand funded the cost of installing the plant for which Samoa and her people are grateful.

The final installation and commissioning of the plant, which included maintenance and training provided to the M.O.H. staff who will oversee its operation and maintenance, came courtesy of the New Zealand Government.

“In total we have contributed $NZ665,000.00 [$1.07 million talā] to the procurement, installation and commissioning of the plant including maintenance and training”, Dr. Trevor Matheson said. 

The High Commissioner emphasised that the project was a team effort and a reflection of the strong partnership between Samoa and New Zealand. The ceremony on Thursday concluded with the hand-over of keys and a site tour of the new oxygen generation plant.

The construction of the premises to house the new oxygen generation plant, which was funded by the Samoa Government, was awarded to the AEC Limited and was completed on 13 April this year. While Atlas Copco and their team of technicians and oxygen engineers from Auckland procured, installed and commissioned the new oxygen generation plant under New Zealand Government funding.