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Emergency case: City miserably short of ICU beds

Updated on: 19 October,2010 08:55 AM IST  | 
Alifiya Khan |

Hospital beds to population ratio works out to less than 1:1000, woefully short of national average of 1:422 and WHO recommended 3:1000

Emergency case: City miserably short of ICU beds

Hospital beds to population ratio works out to less than 1:1000, woefully short of national average of 1:422 and WHO recommended 3:1000

Israr Shaikh lost all hope when doctors at YCM Hospital turned him away. Shaikh had come to the hospital desperate for a bed in the neonatal intensive care unit because his three-day old baby needed immediate admission yesterday.

To his dismay, the hospital did not have any beds free.

Shaikh had been to two hospitals before, and had been turned away.

"I had taken my son to a paediatrician, who said my son immediately needed ICU admission. But this is the third hospital which is saying they don't have a bed free," said Shaikh, nearly in tears. "Where do I go from here?"

His family finally decided to try its luck at KEM hospital.

Doctors from hospitals across the city say Shaikh's is not an isolated case, with several others finding themselves in the same predicament.

In the already packed-to-capacity hospitals, monsoon ailments have added to the pressure on the infrastructure, making it impossible to find a bed free in a hospital.

For people like Shaikh, the key question is that in emergencies, when every minute counts, how long would a patient have to wait before getting a bed in a hospital and a doctor by his side?

MiD DAY did some number crunching on the total beds as well as the ICU beds available per patient and came up with a found that the numbers were shocking indeed.

Public, pvt hospitals
Going by figures provided by the Indian Medical Association (IMA), the Pune Municipal Corporation, and after doing a survey of all hospitals, it was found that the city has some 4,500 hospital beds, with ICU beds numbering about 450.

About 50 ICU beds and 1,500 general beds are in public hospitals. That leaves about 400 ICU beds and 3,000 general beds for a middle class person who can afford and wants private care.

"The patient to bed ratio is indeed quite low. There is a requirement for at least 250 more ICU beds in the city," said Dr Sharad Agharkhedkar, president of IMA, Pune. "In emergencies, especially in times like this when hospitals are already overcrowded, it can get really tough for a patient to get medical care. And the golden rule is that treatment should begin within 30 minutes in emergencies for a patient to have best chances of survival."

According to World Health Organisation guidelines, there should be a minimum of three beds per thousand people.

The city meets only about a third of the requirement. Even the average figure for the country, which according to a study by HOSMAC last yearu00a0 stands at a bed per 422 people, is better than the figure for the city.

No ICUs here
Some blame it on the fact that civic hospitals have no ICUs at all, putting entire burden on private sector.

"We don't have ICUs in our hospitals because we don't have trained doctors and staff to handle them. But we will be getting them soon," said Dr R R Pardeshi, PMC medical officer.

Critical care experts say that the situation is especially crucial at this time as the number of patients has shot up remarkably towards the end of the monsoon.

"The number of mosquito-borne infections like dengue, malaria and chikungunya is so high that a remarkable number of beds are taken up by these patients. And this seasonal variation happens every year," said Dr Shirish Prayag, vice-president of the Critical Care Society of India. "Hence, the situation becomes bad especially at times like these because getting a bed in an emergency depends on your luck."




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