SRINAGAR: At 8 am on May 8, Deputy Commissioner Anantnag made an announcement that the Oxygen supplies at Government Medical College Anantnag were adequately augmented. Post-trial runs, the hospital will have 2350 Litres of Oxygen available per minute. Obviously an extra-ordinary fiat.
Trial run of another Oxygen Plant of 1000 LPM capacity at GMC Anantnag. With this ,GMC has now 2 new 1000 LPM plants functional topped by an old plant of 350LPM. #MissionOxygen @diprjk @nitishwarKumar @manojsinha_ pic.twitter.com/qKAfcJX5hA
— Dr. Piyush Singla (@dr_piyushsingla) May 8, 2021
Eight hours later, a frightening video clip appeared on social media and it frightened everybody. Some people even skipped eating anything at Sehri because of the grim reality the video exhibited in the GMC Anantnag. It showed an elderly persons struggle to stay afloat (possibly) without oxygen as his attendants were crying for help in desperation.
This, however, was not the first clip. Earlier, a similar clip showed a distraught woman gasping for breath in the isolation ward.
In between had come DC Anantnag’s another Twitter post showing a mechanic working on some oxygen-related issue in the hospital.
Our ‘Unsung Heroes’ !! Meet Mechanical Department staff fine tuning oxygen supply at this odd time in the midnight at GMC Anantnag. Indomitable spirit !!
Together we shall pass this. @diprjk @OfficeOfLGJandK pic.twitter.com/18UdzmpDAy— Dr. Piyush Singla (@dr_piyushsingla) May 8, 2021
This clearly explains that GMC, Anantnag still lacks Oxygen or is unable to manage the new facilities better. The district hospital had earlier a 350LPM unit functioning for ages. As the Covid19 dictated a new regime with emphasis on Oxygen therapy, the hospital was already a GMC with the first batch enrolled for MBBS. The hospital has almost 70 beds exclusively for managing the Covid19 patients from the twin districts from Kulgam and Anantnag.
Authorities did work and installed a 1000-LPM plant. But the plant allegedly has snags and is unable to manage the level. Another allegation is that the GMC lacks alternatives like cylinders. But only experts can have an opinion on the real malady the oxygen supplies have.
After being upgraded to the GMC, like all other GMCs, these health facilities are exhibiting an interesting dual control – the education part and the hospital part. Not in all, but in some of them, this is a cause of concern and failure, insiders said.
The GMC did respond to “rumours”, refuting the footage that had moved to the virtual world from the isolation wards. “We have all three plants, two each with one-thousand litres per minute (2000/LPM) and another with three-hundred litres per minute (330/LPM), functional at the hospital”, one unnamed official was quoted by some local news gatherer. It added the hospital was having 159 bulk cylinders and two hundred small and medium cylinders available simultaneously. He attributed the condition of the particular woman as that of Wall Flow, where 60 per cent Oxygen gets supplied at fifty litres per minute speed.
Enquiries by Kashmir Life said the panic triggered by the two images at two different places in time was managed quickly. “Both the patients were saved from the low oxygen level issues,” one well-informed report said. “Even police intervented in augmenting the oxygen supply through their own cylinders.”
Hospital administrators said they are in the process of installing two more oxygen plants of 1000 LPM each – one within a week and another by June. They claim they are managing the show better. But whatever is in the public domain offers a nasty picture of the botched implementation of projects or compromised synchronisation of multiple machines.
Anantnag district alone has lost 119 people to Covid19, till May 8, 2021. Of the 9779 individuals detected with Covid19, so far the district has only 3441 active cases right now. The numbers, however, are surging.
