Daijiworld Media Network - Mangaluru (SP)

Mangaluru, May 5: Although Dakshina Kannada (DK) district has 67 hospitals including the district government hospital, eight medical college hospitals, taluk hospitals etc, all the intensive care unit (ICU) and ventilator beds are full. Patients are worried about the non-availability of beds now.

The people's representatives and officials have been claiming that there are enough ICU and ventilator beds in the district, duly assuring the patients not to worry. This claim is false, as none of the hospitals have ICU beds now. Medical colleges however have normal beds.

The district has 5,164 Covid beds, 3,125 normal beds, 1,528 oxygen beds, 204 HFO beds, 152 ICU beds, 155 ventilator beds and 3,891 non-Covid beds in total.

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It is gathered that people suffering from breathlessness visiting the hospitals for treatment are advised to undergo home isolation. Some have been going from one hospital to the other with patients in the ambulance, and admitting them at some place at the end.

A few young people have been striving to get the coronavirus patients treated, and they know the truth. A person named Hashim was taken in an ambulance to four hospitals on Monday night before getting a ventilator bed in Wenlock Hospital. A person identified as Chandrashekhar went around all the hospitals before getting admitted into a normal bed.

Asif Deals of Wellness Helpline, Illyas Bajpe of Popular Front of India, and Asif Bajpe, ambulance river of Friends for Poor, assert that finding a vacant bed has turned into a herculean task as none of the hospitals have ICU beds. They say that several patients have registered their names for the allotment of such beds when available. Suhail Kandak, Zacharia Parvez, Zia Ahmed Khader Kankanady, Mazair Kudroli, Surai Kudroli and Shahul Hameed Kashipatna are engaged in providing these services.

It is learnt that in addition to the number of corona patients increasing in the district, people facing serious problem from Udupi, Utara Kannada, Kasargod, Chikkamagaluru and Kodagu district are being brought here for treatment and therefore the calculations of the officials go for a toss.

District health officer, Dr Kishore Kumar, said that all the ventilator beds in the district are full and 80 percent of the ICU beds are also full. He said that efforts are being made to get information about the available beds in different hospitals on a daily basis, and the hospitals and doctors have been asked to send patients only after confirming about the availability of beds.

When a representative of a Kannada newspaper contacted ten leading hospitals on phone on Tuesday, all of them said they did not have ICU beds and only normal beds are available. All of them said they can provide treatment for other ailments but not for coronavirus infection.

A social worker, Asif, has suggested that all the hospitals have to provide availability of beds with them in front of their hospitals so that the patients need not run from pillar to post. He said that the district administration had been often requested to provide details about the availability of ICU and ventilator beds in hospitals since a year but even now this information is not available.