Batra Hospital lacks oxygen and stops admissions

Shortage of oxygen in Batra hospital of Delhi caused death of 12 Covid patients recently. On Sunday they said that they were struggling with oxygen supplies and therefore have stopped admitting new patients.

Batra hospital isn’t the only one, many hospitals in Delhi are facing the same problems with some of them being children’s facilities. They all state the same reason that they have oxygen supply left only for a few hours.

“We have informed our patients and posted signs that we won’t be taking new admissions. We have also conveyed to the government that we can’t work with the limited supply of oxygen” said Dr Sudhanashu Bankata, executive director of Batra hospital.

While talking to The Indian Express, a senior doctor at Batra hospital said, “We faced hell. I called the Additional Health Secretary, the CM’s office, Central government staff, everyone we knew. Half of them didn’t take our calls and the rest didn’t help us. We were supposed to get 7,000-8,000 litres but were left with 2,500 litres to survive. This supply also got exhausted.”

Inox, a key oxygen supplier, delivered 5,000 litres of oxygen to the hospital on Sunday. The hospital is also in talks with other vendor from Haryana. And Delhi to procure about 3,000-5,000 litres of oxygen every day.

An official of Delhi government said that they are ready to open more temporary Covid hospitals but because of shortage of oxygen, they are not being able to.

On the top of this new deadly variant of coronavirus, the oxygen shortage is making the matters worse.