Will procure 63 ventilators for 15 hospitals in six months: Delhi govt to HC

New Delhi:

The Delhi government on Tuesday told the Delhi High Court that it was in the process of procuring 63 ventilators for 15 hospitals, which would be completed within six months.

The court had in February ordered that in 33 state-run hospitals, at least 10% of the total number of the beds should be equipped with ventilators.

In an affidavit filed before a bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice C Hari Shankar, the Delhi government told the court it had issued a reminder to all hospitals to submit an action-taken-report on increasing ventilators, ICU beds, including operationalisation of all ventilators lying unused, repair of non-functional ventilators and to move a proposal for the procurement and enhancement of the existing capacity of ventilators/ICU beds.

The government told the court that so far, 15 hospitals under it had submitted replies, stating that the procurement of 63 new ventilators was under process and the timeline set was six months.

It said repair work on 10 ventilators should be completed within 2-3 weeks in these 15 hospitals. The report said response from 12 other hospitals was still awaited

The status report comes on a petition plea that the court had initiated itself after two toddlers died due to lack of ventilator beds in two different Delhi government hospitals.

The matter was mentioned by advocate Ashok Agarwal, following which the high court had asked the Delhi government to have at least 10% ventilator beds in each hospital.

The report said that while Guru Govind Singh government hospital had planned for incorporation of additional ICUs in the new project to add 472 beds, Sanjay Gandhi Memorial Hospital was under the process of having a new trauma centre with 42 ICU beds in the next three years, out of which 21 are to be equipped with ventilators.

The matter would be now heard on November 27.