Balwant Garg

Tribune News Service

Faridkot, June 7

Even though the second wave is showing signs of ebbing in the state, there seems no respite for Guru Gobind Singh Medical College and Hospital (GGSMCH), Faridkot. From May 21 to June 5, as many as 219 persons, including 93 women, have died of Covid-19 at GGSMCH.

The high deaths rate here is attributed to patients reaching the tertiary care centre in a critical condition. Having capacity of 450 beds, the medical college has presently about 140 indoor patients from nine districts of the state. Many of these patients are in critical condition and they reached the hospital after a lot of deterioration in their health, said doctors here.

To make the things worse, most ventilators received through the PM CARES Fund at the medical colleges are still non-functional. Despite engineers from the Army Hospital in Ferozepur reaching here with a on-the-wheel workshop-cum-laboratory to repair the ventilators for three days and the mechanics from the ventilator-maker company making rounds to repair the machines, 51 of the total 88 ventilator received under PM CARES Fund are still defunct.

As many ventilators are malfunctioning despite repeated repairs, anaesthetists are not confident of using them, said the authorities here. Now we have stopped certifying the repair of these ventilators. We have asked the visiting engineers and mechanics to let us use the ventilators for minimum 24 hours, then we will certify about its functional status, said the authorities.

Army repairs ventilators

Chandigarh: The Western Command has chipped in to repair non-functional ventilators and other medical equipment at the 450-bed isolation facility in Guru Gobind Singh Medical College and Hospital, Faridkot. A team led by Col Parul Anand repaired 207 unserviceable medical equipment, including 70 ventilators, multi-parameter monitors, syringe infusion pumps, oxygen concentrators, nebulisers and defibrillators, worth crores of rupees. tns