At Ghaziabad hospital, only 19 doctors for 90 Covid-19 patients

GHAZIABAD: District Combined Hospital (DCH), a 100-bed L2 Covid facility in the city, has been facing an acute shortage of doctors. Only 19 doctors have been on Covid duty while the requirement is 30, officials said.
The hospital has a total of 24 doctors. Of these, 17 are on Covid duty. Two of the other doctors treating Covid patients have been deployed from other districts. The 17 DCH staff includes two anaesthetists and one pathologist. This leaves a limited number of doctors to attend to Covid patients. The remaining seven doctors include the hospital’s chief medical superintendent, Dr Sanjay Teotia.

Of the other six, two doctors are attached to MMG District Hospital, while the remaining four are above 60 years of age and have comorbidities. Officials said four doctors, also from other districts, had been working at the hospital till some time ago but had been recently recalled by their respective administrations. This has led to doctors putting in longer duty hours that stretch from six to eight hours. Usually, in hospitals where there is no shortage, doctors on Covid duty have a four-hour shift.
DCH was activated as an L2 facility in April. Then, health officials had said that two teams of 53 medical staff each, including 14 doctors, nurses, ward boys and sanitation workers, would be deployed on a rotational basis. However, over the last few months, the number of doctors has decreased and there is a shortage of paramedical staff as well. There are 29 nurses and 25 each of ward boys and sanitation workers.
Medical staff at the hospital said the state government should consider allowing home isolation for asymptomatic patients on the lines of Delhi and many other states, as this would not only reduce the burden to a very large extent on health facilities, but also make more doctors available to treat serious patients.
With a steep rise in Covid-19 cases, the hospital remains almost at full capacity. For instance, 90 beds were occupied till Thursday. Three of the patients were in serious condition and required oxygen support.