Plateau patrol soldiers with lox bottles

　　Recently, the patrol officers and men of some units in Karakorum are carrying small lox bottles when they are on patrol duty. They can inhale oxygen from individual lox bottles on patrol duty when they need it. The application of the new type of oxygen equipment means a big increase of fighting capacity of the army.

　　On the Karakorum and Ari Plateau of north Tibet with an average altitude of 4500 odd metres, most frontier officers and men are suffering from all kinds of mountain sickness. Tan Huaizhou, company commander of the Kongka frontier company stationing at the height of 5000 metres, told us that the plateau officers and men used to use gaseous oxygen. The oxygen cylinder then was about tens of kilograms with a capacity of 40 litres. The cylinders were hard to carry and difficult to supply oxygen in the field. It is a heavy burden for the officers and men.

　　The Research Institute of Mountain Sickness of the Xinjiang Military Area Command, regarding the health of soldiers as their responsibility, started the research of individual lox bottle for soldiers on plateau. According to the weight of load for the soldiers, they designed a kind of 1.5 litre lox bottle. Through experiments on nearly one thousand soldiers on Karakorum and the plateau of north Tibet, all index have reached the standards of oxygen supply on plateau and were well received by the officers and men.

　　By Tang Lin and Zhang Fang　

　　(September 28, PLA Daily)