Hospitals forcing patients to leave: No oxygen, no medicines, few tests
India is facing an unprecedented health emergency as hospitals in New Delhi, Noida, Lucknow and several other major cities have started discharging patients from intensive care units in hospitals as they ran out of medical oxygen on Thursday. The families of patients were seen begging and pleading with politicians and their local MPs and MLAs for beds and oxygen as their dear ones gasped for breath. While some hospitals managed to get oxygen supplies, many were still struggling.
Sunil Saggar, CEO of Shanti Mukand Hospital in East Delhi, broke down as he gave details of the oxygen crisis in his hospital. “We are hardly left with any oxygen. We have requested doctors to discharge patients, whoever can be discharged… The oxygen may last for two hours or something. Patients will die,” Mr Saggar said. The oxygen saturation of 12 patients on ventilators in this hospital had started dipping, forcing the staff to use oxygen cylinders to save them.
India added another 3.15 lakh fresh cases of Covid19 to the already overloaded and now crumbling healthcare infrastructure. Thursday’s figures are the biggest one-day increase in daily cases worldwide ever since the Covid pandemic started last year. The death toll too is on a sharp rise. On Thursday, 2,104 new fatalities were recorded in the past 24 hours.
These numbers could be much higher as in several states RT-PCR tests have gone down and deaths may have not been recorded appropriately since many are dying without tests and without treatment. Even basic supplies of medicines in local markets are hit as home isolation patients
struggled to buy Fabiflu, steroids, anti-allergic tablets and even immunity boosters like Zinc and Vitamin C.
Amidst this chaos and crisis, Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired a meeting to review oxygen supplies across the country and discuss ways to boost its availability. The PM mentioned the increasing
production of oxygen and the speed of its distribution and using innovative ways to provide oxygen support to health facilities.
He was informed by officials that the oxygen supply to states is “steadily increasing” and against the present demand from 20 states of 6,785 MT/day of Liquid Medical Oxygen,
the Centre has from April 21 allocated 6,822 MT/day to these states.
The PM said responsibility has to be fixed with the local administration in cases of obstruction of oxygen supplies and asked all ministries to explore various innovative ways to increase the production and supply of oxygen. The PM directed officials to ensure that oxygen supply to various states happen in a smooth, unhindered manner and stressed on the need to ensure faster transportation of oxygen to the states. The PM stressed that the states should come down heavily on hoarding. The PM tweeted saying that he has cancelled his public meetings in West Bengal and will hold meetings to review the prevailing
Covid-19 situation on Friday.
After the PM’s review meeting, the Centre invoked the stringent Disaster Management Act 2005 and directed the states to ensure uninterrupted production and supply of medical oxygen and its transport along inter-state borders. In a letter to all chief secretaries, Union home secretary Ajay Bhalla said the district magistrate and superintendent of police of the district concerned will be personally held responsible if there is any violation of the Centre’s order and they have to oversee implementation of these orders.
In fact, earlier in the day, Dr Sangita Reddy, joint managing director of Apollo Hospitals, tweeted tagging the PM that the Haryana police was not allowing oxygen tankers to leave the state.
“As I tweet, an oxygen tanker is outside the gate of Air Liquide Panipat plant at IOCL, and he is not being allowed inside. Haryana police are stopping it and not letting the oxygen out of Haryana. Need urgent intervention!!” Dr Reddy said.
The situation was later resolved, and the oxygen tankers were allowed to move out of Haryana.
Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia too wrote to Union health minister Harsh Vardhan alleging that tankers carrying oxygen were not able to reach hospitals in the city as they were being stalled by the police and officials in both Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.
To prevent any repeat of such an incident, the home secretary directed that no restrictions shall be imposed on oxygen manufacturers and suppliers to limit oxygen supplies only to the hospitals of the state and the Union territory in which they are located and there shall be free movement of oxygen carrying vehicles into the cities, without any restriction of timings, while also enabling inter-city supply without any restriction, it said. No authority shall attach the oxygen carrying vehicles passing through the district or areas for making supplies specific to any particular district or area, it further said.
The supply of oxygen for industrial purposes, except those (nine specified industries) exempted by the government, is prohibited from April 22, 2021 and till further orders, according to the directive.