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Breaking News:
Four patients die in ICU of city trauma centre as oxygen fails
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Four die in ICU of Delhi's trauma centre as oxygen fails
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The trauma centre was established in 1998 to provide critical care to victims of serious accidents.
But what happened on Tuesday was critical failure due to sheer negligence. The alarm indicating oxygen supply shutdown went off at 6.40am but the supply could not be restored for 30 minutes — a delay that allegedly led to the death of four of the five patients in the ICU at that time.
The prolonged shutdown happened despite the administration being fully aware of the problem — since it had been recurring for the past few days. In a shocking admission, hospital medical superintendent, Dr Richa Dewan, said there was a single, untrained person to manage the oxygen supply in violation of the agreement between the hospital and supplier.
"We have outsourced the gas manifold system to a private contractor which is responsible for maintenance and supervision. As per the contract, there should be at least one technician and a helper but on Monday there was only one person who was not trained to manage oxygen supply," said Dr Dewan.
'Malfunction had been on for many days'
Dr Dewan revealed other glaring mistakes in the way oxygen was being supplied.
"The manifold system has two sets of oxygen units consisting of 11 and 10 cylinders. When one set is finished the other automatically resumes supply. But in this case, the technician was running one cylinder at a time which led to the malfunction," she said, adding that the hospital had registered a police case in the matter. The hospital pays close to Rs 1.5 lakh monthly to the private contractor managing the gas manifold system for maintenance and salary of the technical staff.
However, the city's medical community felt the hospital too had to take responsibility for the failure, since there was no back up arrangement for oxygen supply.
Dr M C Misra, chief of the AIIMS trauma centre, said deaths due to oxygen supply failure in an ICU setting was unheard of. "Usually there is enough back-up and even if that fails we have ambu-bags to give the patient oxygen support temporarily," said Misra.
"This is a complete failure of administration. One cannot get away by blaming the technician. Those responsible must be punished appropriately," said Dr Sushil Sharma, senior orthopedic surgeon at a private hospital.
"There were five patients in the ICU. Of these, Rihana, Javed, Rajkumari and an unidentified man (36 years old) brought by the police died within minutes of the oxygen supply being stopped.
Vikram, another head injury patient, was resuscitated by the attending nurse but his condition is still critical," said a source. He added that the ventilator alarm went off as the oxygen levels reduced. "I rus8hed to the ICU on hearing the sou8nd and but the nurse did not let me inside. A few hours later I was informed about my mother's death," said Golu, the eldest son of Rajkumari.
According to sources, failure in oxygen supply at the trauma centre had been going on for several days. "At 3am on Tuesday, three hours before the incident took place, another surgery was interrupted due to lack of oxygen supply. We first called the technician and then an OT technician was rushed," said a doctor.
The families of victims kept protesting outside the hospital all day but they claimed not a single doctor came forward to explain matters. State health minister A K Walia said an FIR is being lodged against the technician who was operating the gas manifold system and a three-member committee headed by special secretary S B Sashank has been formed to investigate the matter. "The enquiry would look into the causes of the incident and would also suggest measures to avoid recurrence of such incidents," said Walia.
He added that the committee has been directed to submit its report within three days. On Wednesday, Walia has called medical superintendents of state-run hospitals for a review meeting.
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some family member of Dr Richa Dewan should be put in icu and then lets see how he monitors all the aspects of hospital. @#$#@$#@$#@$ blame game
Height of negligence and laziness costed their lives, what is the government doing, just paying them wages. How can a unskilled person work on such a critical unit? There should have been a training session from the contracter and then by the hospital staff to know whether the one they are recruiting are skilled or atleast have proper knowledge about what to do in such cases. An enquiry needs to be put up and strict action needs to be taken..
Hospitals and clinics have become business hubs for not only the doctors but for all those who are associated with this profession... The treatment and the procedures followed are all based only on one principle and that is do do business... the personal touch or the care the patient or their relatives need when their loved one is admitted in the hospitals is totally gone, all you do is pay heaps of money.... All major hospitals in India are just the same, ask anyone about the callousness of the doctors and the staff and many will have many stories about their endeavors with these so called heartless people who are called doctors... the Hippocratic oath taken by these doctors is all but a big lie... who cares about the patients or anything else?? All these big hospitals & doctors are worried about is the money... this is a chain reaction, a well planned scheme to milk people of their money and most importantly to take full advantage of their majboori...
Why is Richa Dewan still continuing as Medical Superintendent ? Why she is not in jail ? Now she and her team will subterfuge the reports and will escape unhurt. Poor people who have lost their lives will never be compensated and we will all forget this episode tomorrow, and then after sometime history will repeat. If govt has some concern for people - It should authentically investigate and find out y it happened and make recomendations for prevention and ensure that it is implemented across the country.
book them all for homiside
really shocked by the negligience of the administraion even when they knew about the problem few dayss back...
the taruma and helplessness faced by near ones is incomparable.. those involved should be severly punished and should be a lesson to all other hospitals..
These unfortunate deaths are due to the atmosphere of callousness and indifference for the welfare of the patients prevalent in the hospitals. Deterrent punishment to doctors, nurses and technicians is a must to prevent recurrence of such incidence. They breached the trust of the patients & their families.
Guidelines and process need to be followed, when we cannot follow then on papers, roads , Couts of law etc .how you exepect in Hospitals,, it is all same, donot exepct Hopsital Human are diffrent
This happens only in India.... This is very shamed on us. Now some hospital staff will not accept their mistake coz of their reputation.... who will the responsible of peoples who was died.. Why there is no Backup in Hospital. Heath minister has to take a strict action on it & gave a punishment so that other hospital will take care of it....
Fact of the matter is that in India getting hospitalized is in itself a traumatic affair. The health sector in this nation is in such a apallable condition that one could safely say that death is better option than getting ill in this country.
Our lawmakers are not keen on increasing govt. spending on health because none of these lawmakers ever avail health facility in India, they all rely on foreign health facility.
Health is now a real business because it is affordable for foreigners so health is being clubbed with tourism to garner millions of dollars; but unfortunately not even 1% of the foreign exchange earned is being invested into health sector for Middle class and people for rural background. The tragedy of this country is that it is fast becoming a health tourism destination where its own people a deprived of basic health facility. In fact, world should know this fact and shun India for its apathy towards its own people.
To call it shocking will be a gross understatement. It was technically the wanton murders caused by utter negligence and concern. What is appalling is that there were no standby arrangements to ensure oxygen supply in such emergencies. The callousness of the Hospital staff is evident that the malfunctioning of the equipment was not addressed for many days when the consequences were glaringly apparent and avoidable by timely action. There is simply no excuse for such ghastly behaviour. There was just a single untrained person to manage the oxygen supply against a team of trained personnel as required person. The complete failure of management and the negligence of contractor supplying the equipment makes it a full fledged crime of all supervising staff fully responsible for this calamity. They all must be arrested for murder and severest punishment be awarded to all of them found guilty on one count or the other.
Sheer negligence, today if a company gets a computer networking done, they will expect 50% redundancy so that in case one fails, we should be able to ready to latch on to the other point by the time it is repaired, when companies can think like these, how come a hospital who caters to critical patients and having a ICU, is so ignorant, here the hospital as well the contractor is fully responsible, a half knowledge is more dangerous than not knowing anything. Whatever happened is unfortunate, though they had the backup system, but it did not work when needed, this is extremely bad situation, patients would have got admitted with severe ailments, but dying of oxygen supply is not easy to digest for anybody. May their soul rest in peace.
FIR against the technician on duty ???? WHAT A FARCE!!!
I am interested in knowing what back up plans were in place? If there weren't any the hospital is accountable.
India is dreaming about collecting foreign funds due to Medical Tourism. Who would go to india for medical treatment, if they can not even provide oxygen to the patients? This reflects nothing but incompetency at the highest level of the hospital administration. The government should put all top level hospital administartors in jail and set an example out of them. And then allow the families of those who died due to this negligence and stupidity, to sue the hospital and claim millions of rupees as compensation, in civil courts. There is no other way and excuse to handle this crisis. This will also restore confidence with general public, at large. Now you know, why they call india a "Banana Republic"? Guess who is running the country? And they want to bring FDI to the country? They can't handle what they already have?
These sections are the problems. the lawyers only see how to put in section ABCD.. what is teh solution. What if some one come to court in pain and the case is deffred , what section implies.. Apani gareban me jhako.. The people get the protection by these sections and court goes on for years so no one follow rules and these sections are only in books.. Justice delayed is justise denied
I can understand the trauma faced by the victim's near and dear ones. The loss is un-bearable. Everytime the dead person comes in front of the eyes. Being a victim myself (thanks to BGS Global Hospital, Bangalore and their high quality care, I lost my mom), I can understand the helplessness of the relatives.
Every hospital death(whether in ICU or in ward) must be reported to Govt and must be investigated thoroughly for a negigence. All guilty hospitals should have their licenses revoked immediately.
Who cares in India, why don't Indians migrate to other lands, property worth crores in middle of garbage in everything
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Four patients in the ICU of state-run Sushruta Trauma Centre in north Delhi died on Tuesday because the oxygen supply suddenly stopped.