All 8 ventilators fixed at Covid hospital in a day

Ghaziabad: A day after TOI reported that none of the eight ventilators at the District Combined Hospital, Ghaziabad’s main Covid facility, was functional, health authorities on Friday swung into action and fixed all the machines. The district administration will carry out an inspection of the hospital on Saturday, officials said.
“The chief medical superintendent (CMS) informed us on Friday that all the ventilators have been made functional and training of anaesthetists was also done. We will conduct a review of the ventilator facility on Saturday,” district magistrate Ajay Shankar Pandey said.
TOI had reported that because of the non-functional ventilators, many patients were being referred to Santosh Hospital from the District Combined Hospital. For any hospital to be designated as an L2 facility, ventilators are a must.
The District Combined Hospital is a level 2 Covid facility and any patient who does not respond to treatment at L1 facilities are sent here.
Sources said the hospital’s chief medical superintendent had allegedly not informed the health department as well as the district administration on the situation of ventilators at the health facility. The matter came to the fore only on Thursday, when the state-appointed observer Dr DK Sonkar and Ghaziabad chief development officer Asmita Lal conducted an inspection of the hospital.
The state observer had subsequently sent his report to the government regarding this matter. Also on Friday, on the instructions of the DM, engineers were called to the hospital to ensure that all ventilators become functional, sources said.
CMS Dr Naresh Vij had earlier said that ventilators could not be installed due to some missing parts. “The engineers had given us three days’ time to rectify the shortcomings, but that time elapsed, and we have apprised the government of this,” he said on Thursday.
Sources also claimed that senior officials in Lucknow have taken a very strong view of this gross negligence of the hospital management and may initiate actions against the officials concerned.