Hospitals face shortage of staff, ICU, ventilator beds

Survey carried out by citizens’ group shows lack of systematic approach in dealing with Covid cases

KALYAN: Lack of manpower, health workers and ambulances, inferior quality safety gears to frontline workers, need for at least 200-plus ICU and ventilator beds, and need for better coordination between civic health department and private hospitals are some of the findings of the survey on challenges in Covid treatment faced by hospitals in Kalyan-Dombivli.

The survey was carried out by the Alert citizens group of Kalyan (Jagruk Nagrik Forum) recently. The survey also revealed that there was a need to have a systematic centralised approach towards dealing with the Covid cases.

The survey was conducted on April 20 and 21 by the forum to get an on-ground picture of the challenges faced, especially during the second wave of the pandemic. The forum visited eight to ten Covid hospitals, summarised their study and submitted it to the Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC) for further course of action.

The forum found that most hospitals or centres were not in a position to admit new patients due to lack of oxygen to the ICU and ventilators beds. The city, at present, has 225 ICU and 161 ventilator beds, which are insufficient as the active cases are as high as 12,734.

Sajita Nair, member of the forum, said, “Although the civic body has managed to set up hospitals and centres for the Covid patients, the number of ICU and ventilators beds is not adequate. When we visited the hospitals, most of them claimed that there was a lack of ventilators and ICU beds due to which several patients coming for admission were denied. There was a need to have 200-plus ICU and ventilators beds on an urgent basis.”

Another major factor highlighted by the team was lack of manpower at the hospitals and centres. As per the study, one doctor was taking responsibility for 30 patients at a time. There was a staff crunch in most of the hospitals. The team also pointed out that the frontline workers were not provided with high quality masks, PPE kits or gloves while they were on duty.

Presently, hospitals have to daily update the bed occupancy figures including general ward, ICU and ventilator to the civic body. According to the hospitals, these updates were not real time and hence the public may not benefit from them.

The citizens also appealed to the administrative machinery to consider all these points and work together with different elements including private hospitals, NGOs, corporates and social forums in these challenge areas for a systematic, timely and focussed approach.

Vijay Suryavanshi, commissioner, KDMC, said, “I have appreciated their study and they have come up with detailed observations. In case of shortage of ICUs and ventilators, we could not add more beds because of shortage of oxygen, which is the case everywhere. We have not begun the work for two oxygen plants. Manpower shortage is there for which we had appealed to people to join, but there was no response. For the centralised system, we have published the helpline numbers.”

Dr Rakesh Jena, chief operating officer of Ikon Hospital, Dombivli said, “The manpower depleted even if one of our staff is infected. The high quality PPE kits are very expensive, so we cannot afford to spend so much on them. Sometimes, these kits cause vomiting among the staff. The government has not done anything to provide such materials at lower price or to cap their prices to the Covid hospitals.”

The forum added that despite Thane Collector’s order that Remdesivir would be arranged through hospitals under KDMC’s monitoring, patients were still made to run for this.

Aspirants turn up for walk-in interviews for the post of nurses, ward boys, doctors and other medical staff at Kalyan-Dombivli Municipal Corporation, on Friday.