Pune: Medicine crisis continues, O2 flow slightly improves

PUNE: Hospitals across PMR continued to face shortage of essential medicines for the fourth consecutive week, though the situation has slowly started improving in terms of oxygen supply.
“There has been no respite from the severe crunch of essential medicines such as remdesivir and tocilizumab in the Pune Metropolitan Region (PMR),” said Sanjay Patil, chairman of India Medical Association's Hospital Board of India, an association of small and medium-sized private hospitals in Pune.
Aniket Joshi, a treating physician and intensivist at 10 Covid hospitals in Pune, said, “In terms of oxygen supply, the situation has slowly started improving. But this improvement needs to be sustainable.”
Pramod Kubade, secretary of the Pimpri Chinchwad Hospital Owners Association, told TOI that the private hospitals were still reeling under tremendous pressure to keep up with the steady supply of oxygen.
“A few hours of stock left is something that we are living with from the past few days and it seems there is no respite from that,” he said.
S Chokalingam, administrative controller of Sassoon General Hospital, said they too had another close encounter last week when only a few hours of oxygen was left in their 28-tonne facility.
“We had to use our emergency backup. There was fortunately no unfortunate incident,” he said.
Sagar Gaikwad, chief administrative officer, City Care hospital, Pimpri, said they had to reject quite a few patients due to oxygen unavailability.