Delhi’s Saroj Hospital moves HC for urgent oxygen supply

The hospital currently has 130 patients, of which 70 are critical and in intensive care and 48 patients are on invasive and non-invasive ventilator support and need high flow oxygen.

People enquire about availability of cylinders of medical oxygen, required for treatment of critical COVID-19 patients, as coronavirus cases surge across the country, in New Delhi, Wednesday, April 21, 2021. (PTI Photo)

The management of Saroj Super Speciality Hospital, Rohini on Thursday approached the Delhi High Court seeking urgent directions to facilitate oxygen supply to it. The hospital has 180 bed capacity with the attached facility of Seven Seas Hotel.

The hospital currently has 130 patients, of which 70 are critical and in intensive care and 48 patients are on invasive and non-invasive ventilator support and need high flow oxygen. The waiting list has at least 172 patients with 64 of them critical with high oxygen support requirements, according to the petition. The hospital also requires a daily supply of Liquid Medical Oxygen of 3000 Cu/M.

“As on 10.00 am in the morning of 22.04.2021, Saroj Super Specialty hospital had only an LMO/Liquid medical oxygen supply of 60 minutes left, after which it has taken the desperate, back-up measure of using oxygen cylinders support which will last another few hours at the most and is likely to run out in the afternoon. Today morning, i.e. 22.04.2021, as of 8:30 am, INOX, pleaded helplessness to supply oxygen when the last supply was at its brink,” Ganesh Das Chawla Charitable Trust, which runs the hospital, said in the petition.

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The petition also states that it requires at least eight hours of reserve at any time in its tank but there have been two occasions when the oxygen supply reached hospital when 10-15 minutes of oxygen was left.

“Within the next few hours, a number of the critical patients and on ventilator support and in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) will face a definite risk on their lives and even a lapse of a few minutes of discontinuation of oxygen can prove to be fatal,” reads the petition, while alleging that no action has been forthcoming from the authorities concerned.

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