God help you!

Delhi hospitals lack equipment to handle emergency cases

After reading this you would wish that you never meet with an accident in Delhi. A number of city hospitals lack equipments that are used to cure patients in emergency care.



A 50-year-old rickshaw puller Ram Bhor succumbed to his wounds after being hit by an unknown vehicle all because three hospitals he was taken to do not have the goods to cure him. Ram Bhor died somewhere between shunting down to one hospital after one another.

The hospitals that he was taken to were: Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital, Sushruta Trauma Centre and Babu Jagjivan Ram Hospital. After struggling to survive for five hours, Ram Bhor died in the ambulance.

Sushruta Trauma Centre, the first specialised trauma care facility in the city, does not have an ultrasound machine which is required to diagnose abdominal and vascular injuries. The CT scan machine, which was lying defunct for the last many years, got functional only a few days ago. Even the doctors allege they are mistreated by the administration and are under-paid.

"More than four to five patients die every month in our hospital, due to lack of medical facilities. Our medical superintendent has asked us to transfer all the injury cases to other hospitals," said a senior doctor with Sushruta Trauma Centre, requesting anonymity.

"Soon the trauma centre is going to be closed down, as they are planning to open a maternity and child clinic," said another doctor from the hospital.

"Yes, there is lack of medical facilities in the trauma centre. We had a lot of shortcomings but we got a lot of equipment from the LNJP hospital," said Dr Ajay Gupta, medical superintendent, Sushruta Trauma Centre.
Lok Nayak Hospital, on the other hand, lacks trolleys, wheelchairs and orderly's from last many years.

"We have been complaining about these issues to the medical superintendent but nothing concrete has been done yet. Even the ventilators are also very few. As per the protocol, there should be 150- 200 ventilator machine in the hospital, but only 12 are working," said a senior doctor on the condition of anonymity.

Dr Amit Banerjee, medical superintendent, Lok Nayak Hospital, was unavailable for comment."We have set up a committee that will probe into the death case that happened today (Tuesday) morning. We want to know the cause of the death as to whether it was a case of death due to the accident or was he denied treatment in all the three hospitals where he was taken to after the accident happened," said Dr Kiran Walia, Health Minister, Delhi Government.