The nation’s healthcare system has been brought to its knees with a daily average of 3.7 lakh new Covid cases and 3000 deaths, as per the Health Ministry and Family Welfare May 5 reports. An average of 3.5 lakh fresh Covid cases and 180 deaths were reported in Karnataka over the last few weeks. Social media platforms are bombarded with heart-wrenching reports on how desperately India needs to improve medical support in order to combat the pandemic.
According to sources, 84,712 hospital beds are available in Karnataka with 22,872 beds being allotted for Covid cases. The number of oxygen beds sums up to 2,075 and ventilator beds to 999. In addition to these, 18,874 isolations and 10,711 publicly available beds exist in the state.
Despite the steps taken, people in the state are dying as a result of oxygen, bed, ICU and ventilator shortages in hospitals. It is noticeable that none of the websites or portals provides transparency in terms of bed, oxygen and ventilator availability in the state.
“The government itself is out of control right now. They have to think practically and provide correct information to the people about the availability of beds in each hospital. By the time someone runs around from hospital to hospital in search of a bed, the patient dies. This lack of information from the district administration is costing the life of many. When our country is so ahead with technology, why can’t the government make a single window system which lets the people know about the availability of beds?” said former health minister and Mangaluru MLA U T Khader.
He went on to say that the government themselves are confused and they are confusing the people too. For the past two years the government has been failing and only now have the people come to know about this failure. “Since last month, the pandemic has got worse but the district administration has not geared up yet. The government is only focusing on making guidelines and by the time these guidelines are advocated, they are changed again,” said Former minister and Mangaluru MLA U T Khader.
It is past time for the state’s government to take action to avoid more deaths. However, the Private Hospitals and Nursing Homes’ Association in Bengaluru has set up a portal “Search My Bed” to provide real-time bed status for treating Covid patients. The government has also directed private hospitals to reserve 50 percent of their beds to treat the patients referred by the Health department. The effectiveness of this can only be determined in the coming days.
