Delhi hospitals have been facing a crisis of oxygen shortage in the past few days.
New Delhi:
After an acute oxygen shortage in Delhi hospitals was flagged in court and through appeals by politicians, including Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, some of the city’s biggest medical facilities received a late night refill yesterday. Oxygen tankers arrived late on Tuesday at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital and Guru Teg Bahadur (GTB) Hospital, which were merely hours away from running out of stock.
Gangaram Hospital received 14,000 cubic metres of oxygen in two separate late night/early morning consignments, enough to hold them for a day or two, Chairman D.S. Rana told NDTV.
One consignment came from their regular supplier, Inox, the other from a private vendor organised by the Delhi government. Similarly, the government-run GTB Hospital, too, received supplies last night.
Officials at Max Hospital, Patparganj branch, however, said that one consignment from Inox, which was at 2 am, arrived only at 8 am this morning. They said that 6-jour gap was nightmarish. Even this consignment is not enough to last beyond the afternoon, they said. Of the 300 patients in the hospital, 200 are on oxygen, officials there said.
The harrowing conditions at some of these hospitals were made known by some desperate public calls made by leaders and administrators.
Acute shortage of oxygen at GTB Hospital. Oxygen may not last beyond 4 hrs. More than 500 corona patients on oxygen. Pl help@PiyushGoyal
to restore oxygen supply to avert major crisis. pic.twitter.com/QNMSoWgNTA— Satyendar Jain (@SatyendarJain) April 20, 2021
The situation didn’t ease even with the Delhi High Court’s intervention on April 19 asking suppliers not to divert stocks to other states. The Delhi government, for instance, had told the court earlier that Inox, the main vendor for the state’s hospitals, was moving its quota to Uttar Pradesh instead. It had also told the court that the Yogi Adityanath government was even blocking supplies coming in to Delhi from plants based there.
The Centre, meanwhile, had assured all support to the city government.
A high-level review meet was chaired yesterday by Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla and attended by Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, NITI Aayog (Health) member Dr V K Paul, and others.
“Delhi officials pointed out a shortage of beds and oxygen in the meeting but they were assured of consistent help by Centre,” a senior Union Home Ministry official told NDTV.
The Home Secretary pointed out the steep growth in number of cases all across the country. From 20,000 cases reported on January 1, 2021, India has almost 10 times more cases (more than 2,00,000 cases) being reported daily since April 15. In the past 11 days, the number of new cases has almost doubled to 2.73 lakh.
Finally, last night, the new stocks of oxygen began arriving at the various hospitals.
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