Kin dragging O 2 cylinders to hosps a common sight
LUCKNOW: Managing a bed at a Covid hospital was not an easy task for 56-year-old Noorul Hasan, a resident of Lucknow’s Old City area, who was down with fever and suffering from breathlessness.
Little did he knew that hospitalisation at a private Covid hospital on Sitapur Road was not an end of ordeal for him.
“I was panting, almost out of breath, when the hospital management asked me to manage my own oxygen cylinder as they are short of supplies. I was taken aback, wondering how I would manage oxygen on my own. But they were straightforward and said you are free to go whichever hospital you want,” Hasan reminisced the day his oxygen level dropped to 42.
“I still opted to stay as I was aware that beds were nowhere available,” he said.
Hasan is not the only one in the state who was asked to manage oxygen cylinder on his own by private hospitals. At a time when UP is reeling under an oxygen crisis, a large number of Covid hospitals across the state have asked patients to bring their own oxygen cylinders.
Scene in Kanpur
Not only in the state capital, but the situation is also all the more same in neighbouring Kanpur where sight of people dragging heavy gas cylinders into the hospital is a common affair.
“It’s less Covid and more oxygen crisis that is killing people,” said Shahnawaz Alam, whose father Ali Hasan, who was the son of Abdul Hameed, a 1965 Indo-Pak war hero, died recently while undergoing treatment at the LLR hospital.
Alam alleged that his father died following the oxygen crisis. “The doctor asked us to arrange oxygen cylinders as they said that they were short of oxygen. While we were arranging for the cylinder that was nowhere available, we were told that my father passed away,” recollected Alam, who hails from Maswanpur locality of Kanpur. The principal of GSVM medical college, which runs the LLR, Prof RB Kamal, however, denied oxygen shortage and said that Ali Hasan was given treatment on priority and provided 14 litres of oxygen,but he succumbed.
Agra situation no better
Richard Benedict, a banker got his ailing father admitted to a private nursing home in Sadar area of Agra. “My father was tested positive, a few days back. Two days back, he felt breathlessness, hence I rushed him to the hospital where the doctor agreed to admit patients on a condition that the patient will carry his own oxygen cylinder,” said Benedict. Since, the bed was nowhere available, he said they chose to hospitalise his father.
O2 crisis haunts Kashi
Ankit Srivastava, who hails from Orderly Bazar area of Varanasi, said the oxygen crisis haunted him. A resident of Orderly Bazar, Varanasi, he said his uncle Nand Kishore Lal, 72, took ill around 10 days ago. “Initially we opted for home isolation. However, after two days his oxygen level dipped to 80. After hours of search, we eventually got the empty oxygen cylinder, which we tried to get it filled from a plant in Ramnagar, but the officials there refused to entertain us as we didn’t have the doctor’s prescription. After hours of struggle, we somehow bought a small cylinder for Rs 15,000. My stars were lucky that my father is safe,” said Srivastava.
Oxygen exp trains
The state government said it was making all efforts to bring in the Oxygen supply in the state in order to meet the gap between demand and supply.
It, however, hasn’t specified the difference between demand and gap yet.State health minister JP Singh said that central government has allocated 753 metric tonne (6,60,527 litres) of oxygen for UP. In order to meet out the increased demand of oxygen, UP government has launched a special operation to bring in liquid medical oxygen from Jharkhand, Bengal and Odisha. Under the operation, the UP government ferried Oxygen Express trains to bring in oxygen from Bokaro, Jharkhand to meet the oxygen demand.
“Being two times faster than transporting LMO by road, we had approached Railways to bring in Oxygen from Jharkhand Bengal and Odisha in order to bring relief to UP districts at the earliest,” said Awanish Kumar Awasthi, Additional chief secretary (Home), who was supervising the entire train operation..