PANAJI
Over four months since the submission of ‘GMC oxygen assessment report” by a three-member government-appointed committee, responsibility is yet to be fixed for the abject failure of Goa Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), Bambolim, administration to shift Covid patients to its newly constructed Super Specialty block on time.
In its report submitted on July 23 this year, the committee comprising IIT-Goa director Dr B K Mishra, former Dean of GMC Dr V K Jindal and revenue secretary Sanjay Kumar highlighted the fact that the 540-bedded Super Specialty block which was equipped with a state-of-the-art Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO) tank had no Covid wards even as the second wave of Covid pandemic hit Goa.
On the other hand, six of the 13 wards at the 360-bedded old block at GMC were reserved for Covid patients even though it operated solely on a trolley-based system for oxygen supply. Additionally, the 450-bedded new block at GMC which was entirely reserved for Covid patients also relied on the trolley-based system and switched to LMO only on May 16. By then, the state was experiencing the peak of the second Covid wave.
The 350-crore seven-storeyed new Super Specialty block was made functional only at the peak of the second wave even though the oxygen has always been supplied here through a manifold from an LMO tank installed at its premises. “No incident or any issue related to oxygen supply was reported from the block even when a good number of patients were admitted in the block,” the committee noted.
Committee further recorded that “somehow GMC was hesitant to send more patients to the upper Specialty Block, which the administration has readied just before the peak of the second wave of the pandemic, even though it was in the adjacent building and had sufficient LMO based oxygen supply. However, the committee feels that doctors who were directly involved were the best judges of the situation.”
It also categorically laid down that the health institutions across Goa had no alternative source of oxygen in case of emergency after June 2018 when the Health Department extended the scope of work awarded to M/s Scoop to all across the state of Goa resulted in creation of a single supplier for all the public institutions. “As GMC’s oxygen demand rose, M/s Scoop stopped supplying oxygen to other public hospitals, except GMC, without any warning, letter or message,” the report states.
Shockingly, the committee had further found that back in June 2020, GMC had tried to put the archaic trolley based system in the newly built Super Specialty block where the LMO tank was already installed. However, even in this tender, only M/s Scoop technically qualified. The tender has since been cancelled.
The daily Covid positivity rate in Goa began reducing only after May 1 and it took another 15 days for the active caseload to come down. While the positivity rate skyrocketed to over 50 per cent in May 2021, the number of deaths rose higher with every passing day. On Wednesday, the total Covid death toll of the state, since the start of the pandemic, stood at 3,482. Of this total, over 2,000 Covid deaths occurred between April 2021 and July 2021 alone.
Considering a stable mortality rate for Covid, it was known that higher the number of patients, the higher would be the number of deaths owing to various reasons including the overburdening of medical infrastructure. It is likely that the initial and timely management of the rising numbers and severe cases could have drastically reduced the burden on GMC during the peak of the second wave.
In an affidavit he submitted on the subject, GMC Dean Dr S M Bandekar stated that “whenever the oxygen saturation gets reduced for a significant duration, the same causes tissue hypoxia and irreversible tissue damage. This causes more problems for persons who are comorbid and old-aged persons. Such a situation can also cause death. I say that adequate and continuous supply of oxygen is important to manage Covid pneumonia.”
Although the committee has refrained from correlating Covid deaths with the acute oxygen shortage at GMC owing to lack of data provided by the GMC, it has hinted that the GMC administration and the Health Department at large could have handled the situation better primarily by shifting Covid patients to the Super Specialty block immediately for continuous oxygen supply.
It remains to be seen whether the government will continue to turn a blind eye to this mismanagement of government resources or whether it will move to fix responsibility where the fault lies.
