This is an archive article published on September 23, 2020
‘YCM Hospital to add more oxygen beds, our mortality rate remains lowest’
At YCMH, 475 are oxygen beds and 90 beds are in intensive care units. There are 135 beds in general wards. We are planning to turn the beds in general wards into oxygenated beds.
WITH State Health Minister Rajesh Tope directing private and government hospitals in Pune to increase the number of oxygenated beds, the civic-run YCM Hospital is also planning to ramp up the number of oxygen beds, hospital dean Dr Rajendra Wable tells Manoj More in an interview
Health Minister Rajesh Tope has directed private and government hospitals to increase oxygenated beds? Do you have any such plans in the near future ?
At YCMH, 475 are oxygen beds and 90 beds are in intensive care units. There are 135 beds in general wards. We are planning to turn the beds in general wards into oxygenated beds.
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How many ventilators do you have and what is the occupancy like ?
We have 90 beds in intensive care units. Of the 90 beds, 63 are ventilator beds and remaining are oxygenated beds. We also have 15 beds in the high dependency unit. We are planning to increase HDU beds to 30.
YCMH is said to have the lowest mortality rate among hospitals in Pune district…
It’s true… we have a low mortality rate of around 4 per cent, which shows the way our team of expert doctors are running the ICU. There is an all-out effort to save every life … Till September 15, YCMH has registered 600 deaths. On an average, five to eight serious patients die every day at YCMH, which has had nearly 13,000 admissions.
Why are five to eight patients dying every day?
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It has to be understood that people who have underlying conditions or have co-morbidities are in the high-risk group. Besides, elderly citizens who are 70 or above are also in the high-risk group. The mortality rate in these two categories is high… Many elderly citizens suffer from two or three ailments… it is not that they die if infected with Covid-19. Many have recovered. The deaths mostly occur if the families delay in getting treatment for their elderly relatives.
There is a disagreement among doctors about use of Remdesivir. How are YCMH doctors using Remdesivir on Covid-19 patients?
We are not using Remdesivir randomly. Our doctors are using it depending on the blood parameters of the patient. If there is incursion of the virus in the blood, Remdesivir has been effective but in the early stages of Covid-19, Remdesivir use has not been effective.
Has plasma therapy been successful at YCM Hospital?
We are using plasma therapy judiciously. When the patient’s body refuses to respond to initial treatment and when his saturation level is going down, we take recourse to plasma therapy. Tocilizumab is the last option but before that, plasma therapy has been tried successfully. It has worked on some patients while it hasn’t been effective in other patients. Clinical symptoms are crucial for the use of plasma therapy.
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Patients’ relatives complain that they don’t get regular updates about the health status of their kin…
We update relatives about the health status of their patients. We do pschyo-social counselling of the relatives. We have set up a separate cell at YCM Hospital for giving updates to relatives… We also call patient’s relatives on our own…
Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.
Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives.
Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees.
During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa.
Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.
Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More
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