HYDERABAD: Osmania General Hospital is failing to provide quality medical care to patients with Covid symptoms owing to lack of oxygen lines, monitors to observe the vitals of patients, beds and manpower, in addition to slow testing of samples. Doctor testimonies prove that the State government has failed to make use of the lockdown to upgrade OGH’s infrastructure to deal with the rising Covid cases, considering the hospital being an important tertiary care facility.
The isolation ward, as on Saturday, has around 50 patients suspected of Covid-19. Often, the number goes up to 80. However, the ward has only 24 oxygen lines. Sources revealed that the OGH had asked the State government for 500 more oxygen lines. Only less than a dozen have been laid since the request. This is despite Public Health Department officials, while speaking to media 20 days ago, claiming that the State government was laying oxygen lines in major government hospitals across the State.
As for monitors, even a layman understands its importance in examining blood pressure, oxygen levels and other vitals of patients. Sources have informed Express that the OGH has just about 20 monitors. Further, apart from a handful of on-call doctors, only around 31 Post Graduation medicos are available in the general medicine department to handle the patient load in isolation wards. Of these, only two-third are on duty while the rest have to be on quarantine.
So at any given time, only 20 PG doctors are available. When it comes to beds, the hospital is nowhere close to accommodating all its patients. While the number of beds in the isolation wards is just 36, the number of patients as on Saturday is 50. Additionally, some of the doctors working in the hospital have alleged that the samples of the patients in isolation wards take longer time to be tested, as they are placed along with the samples collected from those outside the hospital. This, in turn, might even result in fatality in severe cases.