MARGAO
Hopes that the ESI hospital, Margao, may play host to an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) facility to provide in-house ICU care to the growing number of Covid patients have been dashed again.
While the ESI hospital had knocked on the doors of the government to sanction the required manpower and equipment to restart the ICU facility in the hospital, the government has turned down the plea citing no manpower.
ESI hospital administrators, including doctors and paramedics, have been under tremendous pressure since the hospital was requisitioned last month for Covid duties. Reason: While the government had given the nod to restart the ESI hospital as Covid facility, there was no provision of an ICU unit in the hospital to look after patients in need of critical care.
Take note, while the government had restarted the ESI hospital as a step-down facility last month to play host to patients from the district hospital who are on the verge of recovery, the deadly second wave left no option for the ESI hospital but to function as a normal Covid hospital.
During the first wave, the ESI hospital had turned out to be Goa’s lone Covid treatment facility. It played host to a 22-bedded ICU facility. After the hospital was shut down on December 9 last year following improvement in the situation, the hospital had shifted the equipment, including the monitors to the district hospital, which became the Covid hospital for South Goa.
But the rush of patients, sometimes in critical condition, has left the ESI hospital administrators in a fix, whether to treat the patients or refer them to the district hospital or the GMC for critical health care. “The ESI hospital can start a six-bedded ICU facility in the hospital. We have four ventilators with us. But what we require is the manpower, including anesthetics and doctors, besides specialized nurses to treat the patients in the ICU,” informed ESI hospital officials .
If sources are to be believed, the Dean of GMC is believed to have sent a letter to the ESI hospital administrators, politely turning down the request to open the ICU unit in the hospital in view of the manpower constraints faced by the health department.
Sources informed that with the government devoting time and energy to open the specialty block at the GMC, the opening of the ICU unit at the ESI hospital will have to wait for now.
