Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Sept 17: National Conference today expressed grave concern over alarming spike in COVID-19 cases in Jammu and lack of adequate infrastructural facilities to meet the challenge.
“Situation is quite serious due to lack of oxygen, ventilators and above all availability of beds to cope up with the grim scenario”, senior National Conference leaders said in a joint statement and sought corrective measures on war footing for patient care and treatment.
They demanded setting up of a thousand-bedded COVID Hospital on the pattern adopted by the Punjab Government besides allocating more beds in the Government Medical College and Associated Hospitals to accommodate the patients whose number is increasing manifold with each passing day. “The present strength of 608 beds out of the total capacity of 2637 capacity in the Associated Hospitals is meagre and needs to be revisited in view of the crisis like situation posed by the pandemic. The allocation of 203 beds out of 1077 in the GMC, 110 of 250 in CD Hospital, 70 out of 120 in the Psychiatry Hospital, 60 out of 750 in SMG Hospital and 165 out of the 200 available beds in Maternity Hospital Gandhi Nagar is inadequate keeping in view the rise in the number of patients. Therefore, there is a need for extraordinary measures to meet the extraordinary situation,” the statement added.
The NC leaders also expressed dismay over acute shortage of oxygen, wondering why the need for it had not been anticipated immediately after the outbreak of infection, leaving the patients in lurch in the midst of the corona crisis. They called for installation of liquid oxygen plant, oxygen generation plant besides the other plants in various hospitals on the war footing besides similar facilities at the district level hospitals to cater to the needs of peripheral health institutions. They said the shortage and lack of oxygen has proved detrimental to patient care in recent days, causing anxieties among the infected people and their attendants.
The statement lauded the efforts of the COVID warriors at the peril of their own and their families’ lives and said that the doctors, paramedics and others engaged in the fight against pandemic should be provided with all the safety kits like Personal Protection Gears etc.
Provincial President Devender Singh Rana, senior leaders Ajay Kumar Sadhotra, Surjeet Singh Salathia, Rattan Lal Gupta, Syed Mushtaq Ahmed Bukhari, Sheikh Bashir Ahmed, Sajjad Kitchloo, Th Kashmira Singh, Khalid Najeeb Suharwardy, Abdul Gani Malik, Javeed Rana, Babu Rampal, Jagjeevan Lal are among signatories to the joint statement.
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