Ventilators are among the life saving equipment usually put in ICU in hospitals. The recognized norm is five ventilators for 100 beds. SMHS hospital is not a small hospital in Srinagar. In this huge hospital there are only 12 ventilators while 7 out of them are dysfunctional. One can imagine the difficulty faced by the patients who are in need of being put in ICU and on ventilator. For want of ventilators many precious lives have been lost. Doctors in the hospital feel handicapped in face of shortage of ventilators and a great rush of patients from all the four corners of the valley.
When ventilators are not available in SMHS hospital patients are directed to go to SKIMS. But SKIMS, too, has limitations as it has only 30 ventilators which are engaged for the most of the time. This is a depressing situation. First of all why should the ventilators remain dysfunctional? At the time of purchasing the ventilators the suppliers are supposed to enter into repairing contract. Secondly, from time to time there have been the requisitions for installing more ventilators but no serious attention has been paid to it. We have come to know that not only in SMHS hospital, in other hospitals also there is large shortage of ventilators.
This is the condition in premier medical institutes. What will be the condition in district hospitals, one can easily imagine. The Health Department should take note of this discrepancy and take immediate steps to meet the requirement of ventilators in premier hospitals as well as in district hospitals. If it is the policy of the Government that patients in rural areas should not have the compulsion of coming to the premier hospitals in the cities, then the district hospitals should be provided with reasonably satisfactory infrastructure. We hope that the Government will take serious note of this situation and redeem it without loss of time.
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