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Son says 73-year-old Covid patient mum dies searching for hospital bed
According to her 37-year-old son, the woman died in the car while he was struggling to find an oxygen bed for her for almost 15 hours.
The acute scarcity of beds was amplified on with the death of 73-year-old Covid patient, a resident of Ramwadi.
According to her 37-year-old son, the woman died in the car while he was struggling to find an oxygen bed for her for almost 15 hours.
Hospitals allegedly refused to admit her citing unavailability of the beds on Thursday. She ultimately died on April 2, on her way to another hospital.
“I am her only son and there was no one else to take her to hospital but me. I thought I would get admitted to the same hospital as my mother, but even after visiting several hospitals, I could not get a bed for her. Her oxygen level kept dropping and she took her last breath near the Kharadi bypass signal, when we were going to the next hospital,” said the son.
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He is currently admitted in Rising Medicare Hospital, Kharadi.
Pune Municipal Corporation officials said that they are not aware of this incident, but admitted shortage of beds. “I am not aware of this particular incident. I will try to take more information. We will have more beds available by Monday,” said Manisha Naik, assistant medical officer, PMC.
The head of Shree Hospital Kharadi claimed that the hospital already has Covid patients on the waiting list and because of the full occupancy, they can not accept new patients. “On Sunday, by the afternoon I had to transfer seven Covid patients because we do not have beds available. There are 46 allotted in beds in our hospital for Covid and all of them are full. This is not a government hospital. We cannot accept a patient if we do not have space. There is already a waiting list for Covid beds,” said Dr Shrihari Dhorepatil, managing director, Shree hospital, Kharadi.
“Currently all our Covid beds are occupied. Even if there is a vacancy it is getting occupied immediately. When a Covid patient arrives our doctors do the check-up. If we have availability we take the patient. Otherwise, we immediately transfer,” Dr Vinod Bharati from Rising Medicare Hospital Kharadi.
