For four hours at KEM’s emergency ward on Saturday, Santosh Ranjane patiently squeezed the balloon affixed to the artificial oxygen pumping machine at the bedside of his sister’s husband, Pramod Dhanawade, 42. Ranjane had been doing that since 3 pm on Saturday, without stopping. “If I stopped pumping, he would have died, so I could not even move from my seat. My hands were aching, but I could not stop. Of the 27 ventilators in the emergency ward, not one was available,” Ranjane said. It was at 7.30 pm that the doctors finally managed to provide Dhanawade with a ventilator.

After 7.30 pm, doctors at KEM’s emergency ward put Pramod Dhanawade, who had suffered brain haemorrhage, on ventilator