Delhi CM raps Satyendar Jain over ventilator crunch at hospital

New Delhi: Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday rapped health minister Satyendar Jain over the shortage of ventilators in the Delhi government-run hospitals.

“Satinder, this is unacceptable,” Mr Kejriwal tweeted, responding to media reports that manual, handheld devices (also called ambu-bags) were being used to resuscitate patients who can’t breathe on their own. One person has allegedly died due to the shortage of ventilator at Lok Nayak Hospital.

But Mr Jain shifted the blame on the health secretary. “There is a death in the Lok Nayak Hospital due to the negligence. I requested the health secretary to visit the hospital with me. He refused to come saying unavailability of a vehicle,” he said on Twitter. However, he later visited the hospital himself to review the situation.

Mr Kejriwal responded, asking the health minister to speak to the IAS officer in question and ask him why he couldn’t hail a taxi or an auto-rickshaw. “Ask him why can’t he call a taxi? Or an auto?” he tweeted.

The Federation of Resident Doctor’s Association of Delhi (FORDA) said the issue of shortage of critical-care facilities, including ventilators, was raised several times with the Delhi government, but nothing was done. The IMA and the Delhi Medical Council have also condemned the use of ambu-bags as replacement for automatic ventilators at the Delhi government’s largest health facility and demanded urgent solution. In his latest tweet, Mr Jain accused Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung of appointing a “health secretary who is ill-fit for his job”. “Shameful. LG has appointed the most incompetent, useless and insensitive IAS officer as health secretary,” he said.

Ambu-bag have no controls to monitor oxygen, carbon dioxide and other key parameters of a patient unlike the automatic ventilators. The attendants are required to press the device 16 to 18 times per minute to move air into and out of lungs of patients.