Three weeks prior to Eid were a nightmare for Asif Dada, a resident of Anantnag. On 27 April, he admitted his 66 year old mother to GMC Anantnag for treatment, three days after she had tested positive. A day later, his father and his 35 year old wife also began to have breathing distress and were admitted at the same hospital. Leaving his toddler behind, he stayed put at the hospital, along with his younger brother to make sure that the sick family members are recovering. While his father made it out of the hospital alive, his mother and wife never did.
They died on the eve of Eid, within 24 hours of each other. “COVID19 can kill, I am aware of that. But with the kind of mismanagement I saw at the hospital, I will not blame the death of my family members on the virus,” Asif said. The bereaved family blamed the hospital authorities for delaying basic and
vital investigations leading to deterioration of patients’ condition. “My mother was admitted with low oxygen saturation. I was shocked to realize that not even an X-ray was done for three days after admission to assess the extent of the involvement of her lungs,” Junaid Dada, the younger of the two sons who lost their mother, said.
He said when her condition did not improve, doctors prescribed Trop-T (Troponin T Test) to find out if she had suffered a cardiac event. “Heart attack is a serious thing, an emergency. For two days after the doctors wrote the test, it was not done. It reflects how emergency and critical patients are treated at the hospital,” Junaid said.
The young mother of Asif’s two-and-a-half year old daughter, he said, “also suffered immensely in her last days”. “For three consecutive days, they took her for an X-ray. Then kept saying that the X-ray print was not taken,” he said. He said his wife needed high-flow oxygen but was not provided the same. “They told us she was on high-flow but we checked. Her saturation was only moving two percent up despite the purported change,” he said. He said the hospital did not have an ICU to provide the critical care that many of the admitted patients require. “This is an eye-wash in the name of a referral hospital. The facilities here are bare-minimum,” he said.
A day later, another family from Harnag Anantnag lost two of their members within four hours at the same hospital.
However, the administration of GMC Anantnag denied all the allegations stating that the best medical care is provided to all admitted patients. “We have been designated a level 2 facility, for which we are fully equipped,” Prof Showkat Jeelani, Principal of the medical college said. He said the hospital had 10 ICU beds and all of these had patients currently.
However, the official bulletin of J&K Government on COVID19 lists GMC Anantnag having 100 beds dedicated to COVID19. None of these beds is an ICU bed, it states. In the past four days, 15 people have lost life at the hospital. Currently, 72 patients are admitted at the facility.
Prof Jeelani said the hospital had “a little dearth of anesthesia specialists but enough technical staff. He said the administration of the hospital had “offered” the family to shift the patient to Srinagar in a critical care ambulance. “They did not agree,” he said. He said his team for COVID19 management was “working with zeal and dedication” and rebuffed complaints of delay and denial of treatment.