Yasmeen Manzoor
Srinagar, May 05(KNB): At a time when hospitals around the world require lifesaving ventilator machines, Bandipora district in Jammu and Kashmir emerged as the Valley’s one of the most high-risk zones for the coronavirus outbreak, and has without a single ventilator in whole district
Despite being declared as red zone district by the J&K administration, with the count of positive cases touching 130 and one death of the positive patient, hospitals are running short of ventilators as not a single hospital in the district posses a ventilator, which are the only recourse and the last pier in case of the critical emergencies due to the unavailability of the such Prime equipment to deal with the Virus, patients have to go through a lot and when the situation worsens, they are shifted to another district hospitals.
Talking to Kashmir News Bureau Chief Medical Officer Dr Tajamul said, ” Ventilators are being procured by the Director Health of Kashmir and they will reach the district within a couple of days but that should have a trained staff. We can train the staff but it needs a lot of staff which we are not having at present while as we are having a transport ventilator in our 108 ambulance and if we have to shift a critical patient and he needs a ventilator we can shift him on that ventilator to the level 3 hospital at SKIMS.”
When asked about the referment of patients to Srinagar district because of non availability of ventilators he replied, “we are not referring the patients in view of non availability of ventilators although we have level 2 Covid care hospital established at Maternity hospital Pazalpora and the patients who come under high risk are to be managed at tertiary care which is at SKIMS.”
Pertinently, for a population of over seven million, the Valley has around 100 ventilators for critically ill patients one ventilator per around 71,000 people as Valley’s premier health care institute, Sheri Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, (SKIMS) has 40 ventilators, followed by SMHS hospital with 18 ventilators, and Chest Diseases Hospital, which has 16 Ventilators and among others, the Children’s hospital has ten, Lal Ded Memorial Maternity Hospital and Bone and Joints Hospital has two.
Moreover, Government Medical College, Srinagar returned six such machines, donated by an NGO Athrut which cost around Rs 39 lakh citing the non availability of space, specific beds for ventilators, anaesthetics, nurses as the reason.
Despite repeated calls made by Kashmir News Bureau DC Bandipora Shahbaz Mirza did not respond. (KNB)