Delhi’s health system on its knees, patients beg to leave
As India continues to struggle to contain its second wave, one makeshift hospital is so bad that patients are now “begging to leave”.
The crisis has spiked to a point where local media are calling the situation “grim”, with critical patients dropping dead in cardboard beds and on the side of the road as they wait for available space.
Sardar Patel Covid Care Centre and Hospital is a makeshift Covid-19 facility in Chhatarpur, on the outskirts of New Delhi. Its mission is to provide emergency care for the thousands struggling to breathe.
But 25-year-old Goldi Patel’s husband is not begging for oxygen there; he’s begging to leave.
Sadanand Patel, 30, is receiving such little treatment that he’s scared he will die in the very hospital that’s meant to save him. He told CNN, “through laboured breathing” from his hospital bed: “I am very scared, if my health gets critical I don’t think they will be able to save me”.
The report said “he watched two men in beds nearby scream for medicine only to die within hours when their oxygen appeared to run out”.
But he’s not the only one. Desperate pleas scatter social media with the names of patients and desperate families pleading with Chief Minister of Delhi Arvind Kejriwal for more supplies. One warned others the hospital had had no oxygen for the past 15 hours while 49-year-old Jashuwanta Bora’s oxygen was going down so fast his family pleaded for an ICU bed online.
It’s not any better outside the centre, where two women were seen crying next to a 45-year-old man who was lying on the back seat of a car. “He was not moving or responding to their calls,” the Hindu reported. Death, it seems, is inescapable here.
“We have been waiting here for two hours. Now there is no pulse. They even refused to check him even after we said that there was no pulse,” his relative Megh Singh, 60, said.
India — particularly its capital, Delhi — has been hard struck by variant strains of Covid-19 and the number of deaths continues to rise despite the city being placed in lockdown two weeks ago.
India’s total Covid-19 caseload neared 20 million and oxygen shortages exacerbated a devastating second wave on Monday.
On Sunday, Delhi recorded more than 400 Covid-related deaths in a single day for the second consecutive day. On Saturday, the city had recorded its highest ever Covid death toll in 24 hours at 412 deaths.
Worse, experts say the death rate will continue to rise with just over 3400 deaths and 368,000 new cases yesterday.
There are now 92,290 active cases of Covid-19 in Delhi, and only 20,000 Covid-19 beds in the city’s hospitals.
Its positivity rate has been exceedingly high for the last two weeks at more than 30 per cent, or one in three tests returning a positive result. That rate has dropped slightly to 28.33 but it’s not enough; hospitals are still overwhelmed and supplies remain critically low due to the large numbers of cases.
Patients are dying on the streets, out the front of hospitals, or begging to be moved. Some die in waiting rooms before they even get to see a doctor.