PANAJI
A three-member probe panel headed by IIT-Goa Director and also comprising Goa's revenue secretary Sanjay Kumar, IAS, and its former dean, Dr V N Jindal has indicted the Goa Medical College for failing to take any tangible action on oxygen shortage during the second wave of Covid infections in April-May other than merely filing an affidavit before the Bombay High Court.
In its 35-page report submitted to the State government, the panel said on the perceived oxygen shortage: "The first alarm was raised by the Goa Association of Resident Doctors on 1st May. Even after this, GMC did not raise any alarm bells or send any letter or communication on the shortage of oxygen."
It however stayed short of attributing a large number of deaths during the second wave at the GMC to the perceived shortage of oxygen.
It said: "In any case, GMC did not have a readily available real-time database that has segregation of the number of patients on different kinds of oxygen therapy; therefore, any precise estimation was impossible."
Over a thousand deaths were recorded at the premier public health institution during the second wave when oxygen supply issues seemingly led to dozens of deaths on a daily basis for nearly twenty days in April-May.
The panel also noted in its report that a 2018 decision of the government, precisely the public health department, effectively monopolised the supply of oxygen to health institutions across the State to the vendor -- M/s Scoop Industries Ltd.
"The health institutions had no alternative source of oxygen in case of emergency. As GMC’s oxygen demand rose, M/s Scoop stopped supplying oxygen to the other public hospitals, except GMC, without any warning, letter or message,” the probe panel said in its report.
The panel also recorded the issue of GMC's failure to implement recommendations and guidelines of the Central MoHFW on rational use of oxygen and noted that the institution did nothing more than merely appointing a 'nodal officer'.
"Officially, there was no shortage of oxygen as shown by the lack of any official communication," states the report, adding that as per official communication it was revealed that the GMC thought that the alleged lack of oxygen supply was due to improper pipelines (manifold and delivery systems) and not the lack of sufficient oxygen in the pipeline.
The report noted that the GMC resorted to writing to the GSIDC (the agency that set up the oxygen manifold) to check the pipelines rather than writing to the oxygen supplier to increase the delivery of oxygen.
Giving the GMC and its army of doctors, nurses and paramedics a sympathetic view, the committee pointed out that the number of Covid-19 patients at the GMC was much beyond the number for which the infrastructure was planned for or could handle.
"Therefore, the families of the deceased might have been aggrieved for lack of proper care, insufficient attention, or absence of beds or lack of other health infrastructure at GMC. Yet, GMC remained the best bet for people in need of special care. Even private hospitals referred the patients to GMC once their situation deteriorated," the probe panel's report said.
