Prognosis
‘It’s Like a War’: Inside an India Hospital
Desperate for Oxygen
By
and
28 Nisan 2021 05:28
GMT+3 Updated on 28 Nisan 2021 08:23 GMT+3
·
Families
drive hundreds of kilometers to find beds, oxygen
·
Modi facing backlash over government’s
pandemic response
WATCH: An explosive outbreak of Covid-19 in India raises the risk of new
virus mutations that could threaten the wider world. Bloomberg's Ruth Pollard
went to a 1,000 bed private hospital in New Delhi to talk with the doctors
fighting on the frontlines.
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At his crowded emergency room in central Delhi, Ali
Raza can’t focus much on when the next delivery of oxygen will arrive -- 12 of
his 20 doctors are down with Covid-19, and the patients just keep coming.
“We always anticipated a second wave in April and May,
but we never knew it would hit us so hard and so fast,” said Raza, the director
of emergency and trauma at Moolchand Hospital. “They arrive gasping and they
all need oxygen.”
A medical oxygen tanker delivered via the
‘Oxygen Express’ train at Delhi Cantt railway station in New Delhi on April 27.
Photographer: Anindito Mukherjee/Bloomberg
Outside the ward’s double doors, Gagandeep Trehan had
just found out there was no bed or oxygen available for his uncle, who was
struggling to breathe. Trehan had driven 310 kilometers (192 miles) to Delhi
from the northern state of Punjab in search of a bed, his car packed with four
oxygen tanks to keep his uncle alive. Six hospitals had already turned him away
and he was about to get back in his car and try number seven.
“I am scared he won’t live if he isn’t treated,”
Trehan said. “I am ready to pay any amount for a hospital bed.”
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The scenes inside one Delhi hospital
provide a glimpse into the desperation throughout India, where the world’s
fastest-growing virus surge now threatens to spawn new variants that undermine efforts in more developed countries to
vaccinate the public and get back to life as normal. India added more than
360,000 new infections Tuesday, pushing its total above 18 million cases,
second only to the U.S., while its deaths crossed 200,000.
On Wednesday morning, Delhi had just 13 intensive care
beds available in a city of more than 16 million people. Social media feeds
have been filled with a seemingly endless stream of calls for beds, oxygen,
Remdesivir and more.
‘I Pushed the Panic Button’
Over the weekend things had gotten so bad at the
1,000-bed Moolchand Hospital -- one of the main private Covid facilities in the
capital -- that it turned to Twitter to beg for oxygen. Tagging Prime Minister
Narendra Modi and the head of Delhi’s government, the hospital warned that its
oxygen supply would run out in less than two hours for scores of patients on
life support.
Vibhu Talwar, managing director of the
Moolchand HealthCare Group, raised the alarm after his staff
alerted him at 2 a.m. that oxygen supplies were running low.
“By 7 a.m. we were left with just an hour
and I pushed the panic button,” Talwar said. “Obviously those hours between 5
a.m. and 8 a.m. were the most stressful time for me, my management team and our
doctors and nurses. We have close to 150 Covid patients, there was a lot of
panic -- something I hope we never go through again.”
But every day still carries the same risk, as hospitals across the Indian capital have no guaranteed oxygen supply. “We don’t know the quantity or the time,” he said on Tuesday.
With the political and financial capitals of New Delhi
and Mumbai in lockdown, Modi has faced growing criticism over his handling of the
pandemic and his focus on state election campaigns during an escalating health
crisis.
“When we had six months and there were very low cases,
the government could have built more hospitals with oxygen and more
infrastructure,” said Raza, who heads Moolchand’s emergency department. “At
this time, the oxygen supply should be continued -- that is the least the
government can do for us.”
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A week ago the Delhi High Court expressed
“shock and dismay” over the government’s neglect and
directed Modi’s administration to “beg, borrow, steal” to ensure adequate
oxygen supply for hospitals. Since then the government approved the allocation
of funds to install 551 machines to produce medical oxygen inside public health
facilities “as soon as possible.”
Modi this week spoke with U.S. President Joe Biden,
who agreed to send vaccines and other supplies to India. His administration has
also announced plans to boost oxygen production and ramp up availability of
beds, while the Delhi government announced Tuesday it would import 21
ready-to-use oxygen production machines from France and 18 oxygen tankers from
Bangkok.
‘Supremely Contagious’
“The current wave is particularly dangerous -- it is supremely contagious and those who are contracting it are not able to recover as swiftly as was noticed in the previous wave,” Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said. “All hospitals at this point are running over and above their real capacity. Beds are full, including ICU beds.”
In Moolchand’s emergency ward, a woman wailed with
grief next to the prone body of a relative, as other family members looked
quietly on. Raza has added more beds into every spare inch of the emergency
department, increasing its capacity from 16 beds to 25 -- but it’s still not
enough to keep up with demand.
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“We try not to think about when the next
oxygen tanker will come,” he said. “Every hospital is running short of oxygen.
Whatever limited resources we have, we have to work with that.”
Sanoj Chacko, a manager in the nurse unit at Moolchand
Hospital, said every day is a struggle to keep people alive.
“In this situation we have to fight for this,” he
said. “It’s like a war situation.”
— With assistance by Bibhudatta Pradhan
(Adds updated virus and
death tally in fifth paragraph)
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