More than 80 medical staff, which includes 40 doctors and 40 nurses, had resigned from the recently inaugurated jumbo COVID facility at CoEP grounds on Friday, which has raised issues of their safety.

Sujit Patker, Director of Lifeline, who is managing the operations of the hospital, said at least 80 of the medical staff, including 40 doctors and many nurses, have quit the jumbo facility.

The doctors and nurses appealed that they were fearing for their life from people who were “gate-crashing the jumbo facility with abuse and threat.Patker said that few workers of political parties had gate-crashed and had abused the medical staff over there who later raised their concerns regarding safety. Doctors are feeling pressured and RTIs are also filed. They need to focus on treatment of COVID-19 patients but their attention is diverted towards unwanted issues. He further said that medical staff are quitting the jumbo hospital daily.

Afresh recruitment drive has been launched by the management of the jumbo hospital. Full replacement of the medical staff will be done soon. Also, several staff have joined the facility. The hospital management has appointed bouncers to guard the doctors as the medical staff had raised concerns about their safety. Each shift will have five bouncers guarding the doctors. Bouncers are essential as few people try to spoil the atmosphere instead of letting the doctors to focus on COVID-19 patients.

The hospital management said the problem initiated as patients were “dumped” at the facility. They were informed that the patients would be admitted in a phase-wise manner. In the 1st week, they were supposed to admit almost 25 percent of the total patient strength. But we’re handling more than 400 patients in the 800-bed jumbo facility. Patients were almost dumped from other hospitals. The doctors and nurses were suddenly overburdened with critical patients and doctors were asked to join due toan increase in the patient admissions. The management was informed not to deny admission to any patients. A large number of critical patients needing ventilator support are admitted at the facility. Patients are brought in the critical stage and in the past 10 days, almost 35 deaths have occurred.

Mentioning about the death of TV journalist Pandurang Raikar, Patkar said that the family and friends of the journalist wanted to shift him to another private hospital and they had no problem. Three cardiac ambulances were sought by the family of the journalist which turned out to be incompetent to carry the patient to the other hospital. One ambulance did not have a ventilator, another had the ventilator but did not work and the third ambulance neither had ventilators nor a doctor. Their doctors tried their best to save the patient as he was brought in a critical stage.

In the meantime, at the jumbo hospital at Nehrunagar which is in the PCMC limits, the civic administration took the decision of not to admit patients who are shifted from other hospitals.

Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Commissioner Shravan Hardikar, said that they are at firstgoing to admit only those patients coming for testing at YCM Hospital. Until now, approximately 150 patients are admitted in their facility.

NCP chief Sharad Pawar also urged the PCMC administration to take the necessary measures to avoid the situation that had developed at jumbo hospital in PMC limits.

Source: The Indian Express