Kashmir is facing acute shortage of life saving ventilators at a time when the COVID-19 is spreading here with eight people testing positive for Coronavirus so far and around 200 of their contacts under surveillance.
There are around 100 ventilators available in various hospitals across Kashmir and 33 of them have been kept for the COVID-19 patients. The SKIMS Medical College Hospital in Bemina, JLNM hospital Srinagar and Chest Diseases Hospital Srinagar which have been designated as COVID-19 hospitals have 3, 3 and 10 ventilators respectively.
SKIMS Soura has 4, Associated hospitals of Government Medical College (GMC) Srinagar – SMHS, Lal Ded and Bone and Joints have 4, 2 and 2 ventilators for COVID-19 patients respectively while Super Speciality hospital and GB Pant have no ventilators for COVID patients. All these major hospitals in Srinagar have no transport ventilators either.
Associated Hospital of GMC Anantnag has no ventilator for COVID-19 patients while Associated Hospital of GMC Baramulla has one ventilator only for such patients. Both the hospitals, however, have two transport ventilators each for COVID-19 patients.
District hospital Pulwama, District hospital Ganderbal, District hospital Shopian and District hospital Kupwara have 1, 0, 1 and 2 ventilators for COVID-19 patients while District hospital Pulwama and District hospital Kupwara have 1 and 2 transport ventilators for COVID-19 patients and others have no such facility.
A senior official who is part of the COVID-19 team of Jammu and Kashmir Government said that they need at least 500 ventilators to deal with the rush of the Coronavirus patients in Kashmir. He said that lot of people are hiding travel history and they may be having lot of contact besides already positive cases have over 200 contacts.
The other official said that since Kashmir was already reeling under flu, it is very difficult to differentiate between normal flu and the COVID-19. The Corona positive patients may report the hospital at later stage when they will be having more complications. “Such patients may need ventilators and their number may be higher as compared to other parts of the world. So at that time it will be very difficult for doctors to make a choice”, said a doctor.
The SKIMS Medical College Hospital in Bemina, JLNM hospital and Chest Diseases Hospital which have been designated as COVID-19 hospitals have bed capacity of 243, 111 and 80 respectively. However, all these hospitals had admitted patients when they were designated as COVID-19 hospitals and a senior official said that they will be available by the first week of next month. Presently these three hospitals have 3, 3 and 10 beds for COVID-19 patients.
SKIMS Soura, SMHS, Lal Ded, Bone and Joints, Super Speciality Hospital, GB Pant, Associated Hospital of GMC Anantnag and Associated Hospital of GMC Baramulla have 10, 17, 10, 6, 10 , 18, 6 and 13 beds respectively for COVID-19 patients.
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