Salman Shah/ Irshad Hussain
Jammu Kashmir’s health system buckles under new covid 19, wave as many hospitals are running out of short of hospital beds for patients who have been Infected by Covid-19. Despite lockdown in all districts of Jammu Kashmir, covid positive cases are continuously surging on a large scale.
Sher e Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS), Kashmir’s leading tertiary care facility, like other hospitals in Srinagar is struggling to manage the rush of patients.
Even though the hospital’s website did not have any vacant beds for COVID-19 patients at the time of writing; the number of available ICU beds had come down to three. Weeks ago, official figures showed that the Chest Disease Hospital, also at the forefront of treating COVID-19 patients, had only one bed left.
In the past week, Jammu Kashmir has recorded an exponential rise in people testing positive on a daily basis. Jammu Kashmir has 44,307 active positive cases at present. On Tuesday around 71 patients died of covid 19.
Here in smaller and less covered districts of the Kashmir valley, the scenario is even worse. Reports from Government Medical College Anantnag, (GMC), the leading hospital in five districts of Jammu Kashmir covid patients are recovering daily, revealed GMC authorities, but the official statement is not the biblical word anymore, as many people have openly accused and made strong allegations against various covid hospitals including the one at GMC Anantnag.
One of the attendants of a covid victim Abdul Ghani Shah, from Anantnag district told The Kashmiriyat that there are patients who died in dire need of ventilation, but they don’t have ventilators available here. They all know that they allotted ventilators last year, but they are only kept In the storeroom.
Another man, Aasif Hameed Dada, whose wife died of covid said, “The day before my mother and wife died, I was begging them for an oxygen cylinder late at night because they desperately needed it. At 6:00 am, the oxygen level of my wife sank, but they allotted me an oxygen cylinder at 6:10 am, which I had to carry on the trolly. It is all because of their negligence that I lost my patients. They don’t even provide ambulance service.”
” We have a good recovery rate of covid patients, as compared to other hospitals,” Principal GMC, Showkat Geelani told The Kashmiriyat. He said that GMC has only 100 designated beds for covid patients right now, at present 110 are admitted to the hospital. And mostly beds are occupied. In fact, the bed occupancy has gone up to 110 Percent at the GMC Anantnag.”
The official website of Jammu Kashmir admin says that 25 beds are vacant at the GM Anantnag. The website also shows that a total of 120 beds have been dedicated covid 19 patients, out of which 25 are vacant. The website covidrelief.jk.gov.in shows all the ICU beds are occupied at the GMC Anantnag.
Many tragic stories, heartbreaking visuals, humans gasping for oxygen, have surfaced on the internet and on television in the past month or so. As India gasped for breath, the administration in Jammu Kashmir said it was ready for any kind of situation and immediately imposed a lockdown in the entire region.
The Kashmiriyat last week reported about Sonu, the son of a 55-year-old covid patient “the administration has recently established a plant, which made broad headlines, but the journalists never visit back the hospital to check the functioning, the flow of the oxygen is very low and rather than saving patients, it is deteriorating the saturation of my mother as it provides oxygen flow at a very lower rate than the intake my mother needs.” The woman passed away two days later.
“As of now, we have 25 patients who require a high flow of oxygen, we have a capacity for 50 patients, rest are on the medium-flow of oxygen,” GMC Anantnag told The Kashmiriyat. He said that the per-day requirement of the oxygen at GMC Anantnag is 7000 liters. “Right now we have an oxygen generation capacity of 2350 Litres. We also have 200 Oxygen cylinders, which.” He also denied the reports of oxygen deficiency in the hospital.
Several patients have made complaints about the ambulance services of the hospital. A patient’s attendant said, “I kept on asking them for an ambulance, they did not provide us any ambulance service,” however the principal of the GMC denying the allegations said, “Three of our drivers reported positive for covid19. Otherwise, we don’t have much shortage.”
“We have asked the administration to increase the number of ambulances, hope everything goes well, the principal of GMC said.