Mumbai: BMC hospitals turn away 3,000 patients every year for lack of ventilators

When a loved one is seriously ill the last thing you want is for a government hospital is to turn you away Or worse yet for the doctors to tell you that the life of your loved one is now in your own hands And yet this is exactly what happens at BMC hospitals across the cityOn average Nair Hospital turns away two patients every day due to the lack of ventilators but the hospital authorities still claim that there is no shortage of the lifesustaining machine File picAn RTI application has revealed that nearly 3000 critically ill patients are turned away by civic hospitals every year because they are short of ventilators a crucial machine that pumps oxygen into patients who are too severely ill or injured to breathe on their own At hospitals like KEM and Sion patients are not refused but are manually ventilated But that can be just as traumatic for the family membersJust two days ago midday had highlighted the nightmare that one family went through at KEM hospital after they were told that there were no ventilators availableFor over four hours a relative had to manually pump oxygen into his brotherinlawrsquos system to keep him alive until the doctors could finally provide a ventilator lsquoHad I let go hersquod have diedrsquo August 7The RTI query was filed in June by an activist and so far the Sion Nair Cooper hospitals and the Balasaheb Thackeray Trauma Centre have responded to itIn all four hospitals patients are sent away because of a lack of ventilators even as several of the lifesustaining machines are lying in disrepairOut of the 104 ventilators across these four hospitals 20 are not functioning but the authorities have not bothered to repair or replace themEvery day these hospitals receive around 50 patients who need to be put on ventilators immediatelyOn average eight of these patients are turned away every day because there just arenrsquot enough working machinesldquoBMC spends crores of rupees for the development of hospitals It is horrifying to see that major hospitals that treat thousands of patients every day donrsquot have enough ventilators Patients are kept waiting for hours even days or are asked to shift to another hospital This further delays treatmentrdquo said the RTI applicant who is a doctor by professionIn the latest BMC budget municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta declared that the number of beds at KEM Hospital will be increased from 1800 to 2250 whereas at Nair the bed strength will go up to 1800 and at Sion Hospital the number will be raised to 1900 Even as the number of beds increase the number of ventilators remains the same If anything the number of ventilators will only go down each time one of the machines goes bust This is a serious threat to patientsrsquo livesOfficial speakDr Avinash Supe director of major BMCrun hospitals and dean of KEM said ldquoWe get so many patients from private hospitals just directly sent to us Even if we get more ventilators there will always be a shortage However we are in the process of procuring more ventilatorsrdquoAdditional Commissioner of BMC Health IA Kundan didnrsquot respond to calls and messages from this reporter