A five-year-old girl died yesterday after the cylinder attached to her ventilator support system ran out of oxygen while she was being shifted to another hospital 160 kms away in Chhattisgarh's Bastar division, an official said. Chief Medical and Health Officer Dr B R Pujari said the incident took place when Bulbul Kudiyam, who was diagnosed with severe pneumonia and was on ventilator support, was being shifted to Jagdalpur Medical College Hospital in Bastar district from Bijapur district hospital. Kudiyam, a resident of Toynar village, had fallen ill at her ashram school in nearby Matwada village and was admitted in Bijapur district hospital on August 22, Dr Pujari told PTI.

He said that last night it was decided to shift her to Jagdalpur, around 160 kms from Bijapur, as her condition had turned critical. Dr Pujari said the oxygen in the cylinder ran out by the time the ambulance reached Tokapal village in Bastar and Kudiyam was declared dead on arrival by doctors of the Jagdalpur Medical College Hospital. "Generally it requires one oxygen cylinder to shift patients from Bijapur to Jagdalpur. We will investigate how it got exhausted so quickly," Dr. Pujari said. When asked if a medical technician was travelling in the ambulance, Dr Pujari said that the hospital's sole 108 ambulance with a technician was on duty somewhere else and so Kudiyam was shifted in an ambulance without one.