Outside RML, patients keep coming, no one to see them

New Delhi: Amid the raging fourth wave of the pandemic here, hospitals are tumbling under the pressure of increasing Covid-19 patients, arriving at their doorstep gasping for breath. At Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital (RML) the situation was dire on Tuesday as patients with serious symptoms kept coming in with no one to treat or attend to them.

As the line outside the testing centre increased with time, so did the number of ambulances arriving at the Trauma Centre (Covid), carrying patients plugged into an oxygen cylinder.

During the afternoon, the centre saw a gush of vehicles one after the other trying to find a bed with oxygen. "We tried GTB Hospital but there is no bed there. I also tried various other centres but could not find any bed. Even here they have just put on an oxygen mask. If that were the case, I would have done that at home. Here my father is unattended," a family member trying to get his father shifted from RML said. On the other hand, as patients with severe breathing issues kept coming in, there was no one to attend to them, wherein families of the positive patients had to themselves get the stretcher along with the ambulance or cab driver who had come along. Without any PPE kits, the family members and drivers had to take the patient in on their own.

A patient who was having severe breathing issues, was inside the ambulance for at least 20 minutes, while his helpless son cried and tried to find a stretcher and looked at the situation inside the hospital.

In a different corner, a patient was left unattended for one hour. The wife was running pillar to post trying to find an available doctor. She said that when she went inside the Trauma Centre, the doctors were not available and asked her to visit a different building. Another Covid patient was left on the stretcher as his family member tried to make calls.

In a desperate bid, family members of positive patients tried to take them to a different hospital. "We are being told there is no bed here and I am trying to persuade my mother to go to Safdarjung Hospital," a helpless daughter said.

A healthcare worker who had stepped out of the covid ward on being asked whether any oxygen bed was available said that all beds were full. When asked how they were managing the heavy flow of patients, the healthcare worker said, "We are not able to do much here. We are asking them to go somewhere else, rest we are trying to get in as many as we can," he added.

The flow of vehicles carrying Covid-19 patients was just increasing with auto-drivers saying that the number increases at night.