No one died for want of O2: TS claim

Doctors rubbish state version

The Telangana state government’s claims that no one in the state died due to oxygen shortage during the ongoing second wave of Covid-19 have been rubbished by doctors, public health specialists and health workers.

The state government has, in response to a missive from the Centre to all states asking whether there were deaths of Covid19 patients resulting from a shortage of oxygen, has informed the Centre that Telangana did not have any such death.

The letter was sent on Wednesday to the Centre, health department officials said.

Fact is that at the peak of the Covid second wave, there were many complaints of inadequate oxygen supplies at government and private hospitals in the state. The instances of Covid-19 patients losing lives as a result were many.

While private hospitals experiencing oxygen shortages were quick to send away Covid-19 patients to government hospitals, the latter too had made many patients gasping for breath and running around from one facility to another.

Several deaths from lack of adequate oxygen supply to the patients were reported by this newspaper from the Telangana Institute of Medical Sciences alone during the peak of the second wave, apart from other hospitals.

A technical loophole appears to have come in handy for the government in denying that any death occurred due to shortage of oxygen supplies.

A senior doctor said: “There is no provision in the death certificate to record that a person died due to lack of oxygen supply. It has technically not been identified as a cause of death. But this was the reason for several deaths among Covid patients.”

Most deaths were attributed to comorbid conditions. There have also been accounts posted on social media platforms by distraught families as they desperately searched for an oxygen source.

Though the health authorities have denied this, it was a common sight during the peak of the second wave to see ambulances with patients gasping for breath lining up in front of hospitals. Several of them died in the vehicles, as well as in the waiting areas of hospitals because they did not get oxygen-equipped beds. Or there were no oxygen lines on the beds.

A doctor from a government hospital told this newspaper: “When the government claims there was no death due to oxygen shortage, does it mean that everyone who required oxygen was provided with it? The answer is no. If the government claim is correct, then patients in ambulances that ran out of oxygen outside hospitals too would have been saved. That has not happened.”

Director of Medical Education Dr Ramesh Reddy said, “A committee was constituted to monitor oxygen supply. Oxygen supply was maintained seamlessly. There was an hourly update in the system. There is no account of any death due to oxygen shortage.”