PESHAWAR/ISLAMABAD: Seven patients died at the Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH) on Saturday night due to lack of oxygen, prompting the provincial government to order an inquiry to identify those responsible for the tragedy, officials said.
Except for a child, the remaining six patients were suffering from the coronavirus and admitted to the hospital for intensive care, according to hospital officials.
"The crisis began on Saturday midnight when critical patients started feeling unwell. Initially, I thought only we could have the oxygen shortage but soon we learnt that all the patients faced similar issues," recalled an attendant of a patient.
Pleading anonymity, he said they managed to get a cylinder for their patient but by 3am. There was no oxygen in the entire hospital that affected all critical patients in medical and surgical ICUs, CCU and isolation wards meant for Covid-19 patients.
Some of the doctors working in the KTH claimed that the number of patients who died due to lack of oxygen was higher than the figure released by the hospital administration and Health Minister Taimur Saleem Jhagra.
However, hospital spokesman Farhad Khan said only 6-7 patients had died. He argued that it would be an exaggeration that all ofthem died for lack of oxygen.
He said the hospital had a large number of Covid-19 patients and every day two to three critical patients died. According to him, those who died of gas shortage included three men and three women. They were all Covid-19 patients and were above 50 years of age.
The incident was immediately highlighted by the mainstream electronic media as well as the social media that prompted the government to order an inquiry. Chief Minister Mahmood Khan, Health Minister Taimur Saleem Jhagra and Chief Secretary Kazim Niaz took notice and ordered a probe.
Since the hospital is run by the Board of Governors (BoG), therefore, the government didn’t directly intervene and directed the hospital board to look into the issue and submit a report within 48 hours.
BoG Chairman Prof Nadeem Khawar rushed to the hospital and called an emergency meeting. He constituted a three-member inquiry committee with a general surgeon and former medical director KTH Prof Roohul Muqeem in the chair to investigate and submit a report in 48 hours.
Two other members of the committee are Dr Farman Khan, former hospital director KTH and Dr Saudul Islam Malik, medical officer.
The faculty members as well as different associations of the doctor community wanted the chief minister to appoint a high-level inquiry committee and investigate as to what had happened to the KTH during the past seven years when the hospital was handed to an autonomous board.
Health Minister Taimur Saleem Jhagra told The News that since the hospital was being run by an autonomous board, they could not intervene in its affairs. Meanwhile, different political parties and organisations of the doctors expressed shock over what had happened in the KTH and sought an impartial inquiry.
The Awami National Party members staged a protest at the gate of the hospital to condemn the incident and demanded action. Dr Syed Akhtar Ali Shah, Chairman Good Governance Forum, expressed sorrow over the death of Covid-19 patients and called for measures to stop such happening in future.
The KTH has been in crisis, particularly after the implementation of the MTI Act 2015, for which mainly the Board of Governors are held responsible.
According to insiders at the hospital, the BoG members had got themselves involved in micromanagement that paralysed the hospital affairs. "If the provincial government is serious, it should remove the board and appoint chief executive of the hospital and hand it over to the Health Department," said an official of the hospital administration.
Pleading anonymity, he said the hospital was almost closed and emergency services remained suspended and only Covid-19 patients were being treated. The government has pumped heavy resources into the hospital but it didn't help improve patient care, apparently due to mismanagement in the board.
"This is the visible deterioration of the system and failure of the board that led to this tragedy. And it doesn't seem to be the last one," said an official of the hospital on condition of anonymity.
He felt that some members of the board had planned to get rid of the present hospital director, stated to be honest and professional to bring a person of their choice. He said something had gone wrong that led to the oxygen crisis.
He said the hospital had a big oxygen tank with 10,000-liter capacity and the administration should have increased its daily supply to cope with the growing demand for oxygen. "Keeping in view the rising number of critical patients dependent on oxygen, the hospital administration should have increased daily supply, as they had the storage capacity of 10,000 liters," said the consultant.
Another official of the hospital administration told The News that they had been facing an extra burden in recent weeks apparently following the outbreak of the second wave of the coronavirus which had also increased consumption of oxygen.
He said they had never been in such a situation before as they had an agreement with a company for providing them oxygen on a daily basis.
According to the official, 2500-3000liter oxygen was daily being supplied to KTH from Taxila in Punjab and refueled to the hospital tank which was later distributed to different units. The gas supply on Saturday night got delayed due to unknown reasons.
The oxygen was supplied at around 3am but by then the damage had been done. The total active COVID-19 cases in Pakistan on Sunday were recorded 53,126, as 3,308 more people tested positive during the last 24 hours.
Fifty-eight corona patients, who were under treatment in hospital died on Saturday, according to the latest update issued by the National command and Operation Centre (NCOC). No affected person was on ventilator in Balochistan and Gilgit Baltistan (GB), while 357 ventilators were occupied elsewhere in Pakistan, out of 1,762 allocated for COVID-19 patients.
Some 41,645 tests were conducted across the country on Saturday, including 13,684 in Sindh, 14,983 in Punjab, 4,757 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), 6,852 in Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), 413 in Balochistan, 411 in GB, and 545 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK).
Around 355,012 people have recovered so far across Pakistan making it a significant count with over 86 percent recovery ratio. Since the pandemic outbreak, a total of 416,499 cases have been detected so far, including AJK 7,278, Balochistan 17,440, GB 4,719, ICT 32,414, KP 49,220, Punjab 122,955 and Sindh 182,473.
About 8,361 deaths have been recorded in country since the eruption of the contagion, including 3,011 Sindh among 20 of them died in hospital on Saturday, 3,162 in Punjab 25 of them died in hospital on Saturday, 1,404 in KP Five of them died in hospital on Saturday, 340 in ICT among six of them died in hospital on Saturday, 169 in Balochistan, 98 in GB and 177 in AJK two of them died in hospital on Saturday.
A total of 5,754,986 corona tests have been conducted so far, while 616 hospitals are equipped with COVID facilities. Some 2,996 corona patients were admitted in hospitals across the country.
Meanwhile, Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Senator Shibli Faraz Sunday said coronavirus cases were increasing due to the opposition’s public rallies. In tweets, the minister noted that following the Pakistan Democratic Movement's Peshawar and Multan meetings, corona cases and mortality rates in these cities were rising sharply.
Holding these gatherings, he emphasised, was tantamount to flouting the law and SOPs. He said while the opposition leaders were quarantined in the comfort of their own homes, the workers and the public were being used as fuel for protection of personal political interests. He wondered, “How long will the opposition continue to play with the lives of innocent people? The conscious people who lost their loved ones to the virus will never forgive them”.
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