After 12 deaths in a span of two weeks, seven more patients lost their lives within one-and-a-half-hours on Saturday, casting a pall of gloom on Mumbai’s Jogeshwari Hospital.
The commonality in all the seven cases was the lack of oxygen. “What transpired was an identical indicator attached to oxygen line that indicated 'low oxygen pressure'. Patients would begin gasping and before we could do anything it would be all over,” a doctor told Mumbai Mirror on conditions of anonymity.
The doctors and nurses said what was happening at the hospital was unprecedented and they had never in their careers witnessed patients dying in such quick succession, adding that they are not adequately equipped to tend to patients in large numbers.
The hospital currently has no intensivist on its rolls and on Saturday night, there were two just-out-of-college MBBS graduates and two nurses on ICU duty. Besides, the MBBS doctors, who were substituting for two senior doctors on sick leave, were unavailable in the ICU when the seven patients passed away.
When the patients began gasping for breath, the nurses rushed to alert a senior resident doctor, who was posted on the 10th floor isolation ward. However, by the time he reached the ICU and could stabilise the oxygen levels with the help of a technician, the patients were gone.
The deaths prompted Medical Superintendent Dr Mane to call an emergency meeting at 4.30 am to review the situation.
Other patients in the ward panicked after a chaos ensued, following which doctors from other departments were summoned to monitor their condition and calm them down.
"Apart from fixing the oxygen supply, which is such a basic requirement, this hospital needs more senior doctors. The ICU beds have been added to handle Covid-19 patients without adding the requisite manpower,” the report quoted a nurse.
“No doctor will want to work in a hospital where he has to watch his patients die because of lack of oxygen,” a doctor told Mumbai Mirror.
Meanwhile, Dr Mane denied the deaths were caused by lack of oxygen, and said that the fatalities were caused due to the absence of doctors in the ICU during those two hours. She has instituted an inquiry to find out how and why that happened. “It is the duty of resident medical officers to manage critical care patients. We will find out why they were absent and why no replacement was arranged,” she said.
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