New Delhi: On a sad Saturday afternoon, the troubled staff at the Saroj Super Specialty Hospital in Delhi broke down and started praying anxiously as the lives of more than 100 patients whose condition were getting worse because of the depleting oxygen supply.
After the staff spent hours running around in search of supplies and making frantic calls to the government and police, an oxygen tanker had reached the hospital. But the tanker could not enter the area where the hospital’s oxygen tank is situated. Because the tanker was larger than normal size. And the solution is an excavator, which can break a portion of a ramp.
The most tensed scenes began to unwind as the hospital ran out of oxygen in the afternoon and the supply from the businessperson never came.
The situation was getting tenser over fears of an imminent tragedy similar to the one at the Jaipur Golden Hospital, where 20 patients died because of a shortage of oxygen.
“We really didn’t know what to do,” Pankaj Chawla, the owner of the hospital, said.
“This was the time we started discharging patients. We told families that we don’t have oxygen and they can take their patients to some other healthcare facilities,” Pankaj Chawla said.
The hospital, run by a trust, discharged 34 patients during this time. As the rest were on ventilators, their families were told to arrange oxygen cylinders.
“Most of the patients said, ”we will stay… it’s the same situation everywhere. Let’s see what happens”. Thirty-four were medically okay to go,” Pankaj Chawla said.
The hospital went to the high court to get an order for instant aid, but there was no immediate help.
By the time the order comes and gets executed, things were changing every minute, according to advocate Prab Sahay Kaur, who represented the hospital in the court.
The hospital borrowed oxygen cylinders from various healthcare departments, as some Delhi government officials worked in the background. Later, the government allowed a tanker to it on a sharing base.
“The tanker came to the hospital, but it was so big that it couldn’t get into the area where our LMO (liquid medical oxygen) tank is,” Pankaj Chawla said.
“We started breaking down a wall and a ramp with electric jackhammers and whatever we had, but it was taking time and the tanker had to go to the Tirath Ram Shah Hospital.”
And the government officials told the hospital that the tanker would come back after an hour.
“That’s the time everybody thought nothing can save us. All of us, my doctors, my staff started crying. We were running out of luck, too,” Pankaj Chawla recalled.
The hospital staff and some police staff in a hurried manner rushed to get some cylinders filled.
Twenty cylinders were brought to the hospital in a Delhi Transport Corporation bus. Those cylinders lasted 40 minutes and actually saved the day, he said.
“In the meanwhile, we called the mayor, fire department… brought in a JCB (excavator), which broke a portion of the wall and the ramp,” Pankaj Chawla said.
After delivering oxygen at the Tirath Ram Shah Hospital, the police brought the tanker back.
“It could’ve been another Jaipur Golden tragedy, perhaps, of a bigger size… All this time, the families were there, helping us,” Pankaj Chawla said.
Now, there are over 100 patients at the hospital, the majority of them on oxygen support.
The owner thanked Prab Sahay Kaur for helping them, saying it was “mainly because of her we could achieve what we did”.
Prab Sahay Kaur compared the whole incident to a horror movie.
The tanker, which went to another hospital, was taking time to return and all the ventilators had gone completely empty, she said.
Hence, each of the 53 patients had to be removed from the ventilator and manually put on BiPAP machines. Doctors were observing each patient, trying to control the oxygen pressure and ensure the patient is stable, she added.
In about half an hour, the oxygen cylinders would have emptied out and cylinders provided by the Delhi government were also not enough, she said, as they actually lost out all hope.
Finally, she added, the tanker did come, lives were saved and a tragedy was avoided.
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