E-Paper
Civic administration fails to increase health infrastructure in Pune during lockdown
An official from the PMC offered the beds related data which suggest the administration was able to increase 159 ICU beds with ventilators, 95 beds without ventilators and 348 beds with oxygen in the city during the 10-day lockdown period.
If expanding health infrastructure was one of the aims of the administration during the lockdown, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) along with district authorities failed to utilise the period to achieve its target.
An official from the PMC offered the beds related data which suggest the administration was able to increase 159 ICU beds with ventilators, 95 beds without ventilators and 348 beds with oxygen in the city during the 10-day lockdown period.
The capacity building was way short than what PMC had aimed – when Shekhar Gaikwad was the civic chief he announced to increase the bed capacity to 70,000 in various educational institutes.
Though the beds have increased as per the Pune Divisional Commissioner’s dashboard as of July 24, not a single ICU bed with the ventilator was available for patients in PMC area while only six ICU beds without ventilators are available.
The figures suggest although the administration was able to increase the beds slightly during the lockdown, the on-ground situation showed critical patients are not getting beds while running from hospital to hospital.
On the instruction of the Pune district guardian minister Ajit Pawar, the Pune district administration had introduced the lockdown for 10 days from July 14 to July 23. As the beds situation became critical, the administration decided to introduce the lockdown and got a breathing period to increase the medical infrastructure.
Bharatiya Janata Party’s city unit president Jagdish Mulik issued a press statement and said that city’s health facility is on a ventilator.
Mulik said, “The lockdown has completely failed. Despite the lockdown, citizens are not getting beds in hospitals. Not a single ventilator is available in the city. Private hospitals are charging more, patients are not getting beds and ambulances and no one has control over this situation. The state government needs to concentrate on Pune city.”
Though the figures available with the PMC shows the administration has been able to increase the beds capacity, it is not helping to sort out the crises as the surge is bigger and every day more than 1,500 Covid-19 positive cases are emerging in the city.
The officer on special duty Saurabh Rao said, “The administration definitely tried to improve the beds’ situation in the city. But the surge is big and as compared to the surge we must accept that the infrastructure is lacking. But we would ensure that each patient would get treatment and we’ve given instructions to the private hospitals to not deny any patient. If they do not have a ventilator or ICU bed vacant, they should first admit the new patient and start treatment on the vacant beds. Later, that hospital would search the vacant bed in other hospitals through their network or dashboard and inform the relatives.”
Rao said that we are expecting more critical patients at the end of July and therefore the goal is to upgrade the infrastructure to handle the situation.
District collector Naval Kishore Ram said, “The private hospitals accepted that they would add more beds in the deluxe and semi-deluxe rooms. It would help to increase more beds in the existing infrastructure.”
BOX
bed category/ 13 July/ 23 July/ beds increased during lock down
Without Oxygen beds / 11085/11253/168
Oxygen beds/1715/2063/348
ICU beds/ 350/509/159
Ventilators/ 210/305/95
