Lucknow: Bursting at seams, King George's Medical University asks hospitals to share load

LUCKNOW: Overburdened with both non-Covid and Covid patients, including black fungus infection cases, King George's Medical University (KGMU) on Saturday appealed to other government medical institutions and hospitals to share its non-Covid emergency load.
Faculty in charge, media cell, Dr Sandip Tiwari and cofaculty in charge Dr Sudhir Singh, held out the request to non-Covid institutes or those running smaller Covid facilities, to run their emergencies to capacity and lessen the burden on KGMU.
The statement read that KGMU is running a 988-bed Covid facility, largest in the state, which successfully treated over 5,000 patients, conducted more than18 lakh tests at its labs and administered 40,000 vaccine doses. As of now, over 600 Covid-19 patients and more than 200 black fungus infection cases are under treatment here.
KGMU is also running various non-Covid emergency services like trauma centre, obstetrics and gynaecology facilities, dialysis, neonatology, and oncology.
The university has a staff strength of over 10,000, including 2,800 doctors. Currently, the university’s resources are overwhelmed and it is unable to accommodate more non-Covid emergency cases. Hence, authorities said, KGMU would appreciate if other institutions share its burden by increasing their capacities and not referring patients to the university.
Doctors said, KGMU’s trauma centre has 150 beds and 10 operation theatres (5 major and 5 minor) for non-Covid patients — general surgery, orthopaedics, neurosurgery, plastic surgery and gastrointestinal surgery. On an average, 50 complex non-Covid emergency cases arrive daily. Currently, all beds are occupied. The situation is so tough that at times, patients are treated on stretchers, they added.
Likewise, doctors said, in the trauma paediatric and neonatal emergency units, 15 of 20 beds are occupied. Similarly, of 340 beds in Queen Mary's Hospital, occupancy is 150 with15-20 new admissions daily. Cancer patients have occupied 90% of 65 beds in surgery and radiotherapy, they said.
Elaborating further, Dr Singh said, human resources have been overstretched because many doctors are suffering from Covid. Also, staff members deployed in Covid wards cannot be deployed at non-Covid wards because they may be virus carriers and can inadvertently pass it to non-Covid patients, he added.
Sources said, KGMU vicechancellor Lt Gen (retd) Dr Bipin Puri also updated the secretary of medical education on the situation and sought help from the government.