Hyderabad: In Andhra Pradesh’s most backward district of Anantapur, the parking lot of the largest government hospital is now a Covid ward, patients in its outpatient (OP) ward have been sharing beds and oxygen cylinders, and families taking on the task of caring for them because of acute nursing shortage.
What’s worse, private hospitals here have stopped admitting Covid patients too.
In the belated second wave, this southern state is also witnessing hospital bed and oxygen shortages that were earlier reported in northern India.
At the Government General Hospital in Anantapur on 25 May, there were about 30 patients in the 14-bed outpatient (OP) ward — two on one bed, some sitting on chairs, and one person on the ground.
The five staff nurses at the outpatient ward were desperately scrambling to arrange a bed for the patient on the ground.
“The situation is a lot better now; had you come three days ago, you would have seen worse. We had no place to even stand,” Madhavi, a staff nurse, told ThePrint. “We got chairs from outside and made patients sit in a row and gave them oxygen support.”
Madhavi wasn’t wearing a traditional personal protective equipment (PPE) but had donned polythene as an apron.
Just as she was speaking to ThePrint, she was interrupted by an autorickshaw, which came directly to the OP ward with a patient, gasping for breath, almost about to fall out of the vehicle.
In the pouring rain, Madhavi managed to get the patient under the roof but neither was there a bed nor a free chair free for him to sit and get oxygen support.
Helpless, she put him on a bed already occupied by another 40-year old man.
“This is pretty much the situation. We’ve handled worse. We just shifted 20 patients into the hospital minutes ago,” she said before running off to check if the patient at the end of the ward, whose bed had been placed under the tin roof, wasn’t getting wet.
It was somewhat of a better situation at the Covid ward set up in the parking lot of the hospital. While families were taking care of the patients, there was no sharing of beds or cylinders here.
An independent non-profit organisation Alambana has taken up the initiative and set up the 30-bed ward with the help of the government hospital.
“For all the villages and people of the town, the Anantapur GGH hospital is the go-to in case of an emergency,” Meka Janardhan of Alambana organisation said. “We’ve seen people here lying on the road at hospital entrance, gasping for breath, dying outside the GGH, dying at the OP ward in the hospital waiting for a bed and so we decided we can set up this triage at the hospital.”
In all, about 3,347 villages in the district depend on six major government hospitals in the region.
According to the state health bulletin, Anantapur has 3,713 active cases as on 1 June. In some relief to the district, the positivity rate has also slumped to 5.9 per cent.
All this, however, is a far cry from the peak of 45 per cent positivity rate on 17 May. The active cases on 17 May were also at 14,000.
Pvt hospitals not admitting patients
The situation in Anantapur has been aggravated by private hospitals in the town not admitting Covid patients needing oxygen support due to a shortage.
On 25 May, ThePrint went to 10 private hospitals in Anantapur town area where all of them have said that they’ve stopped admitting Covid patients for a week due to oxygen shortage. A few of them were Care and Cure hospital, Sai Anand, Chandra Super Speciality hospital, YSR Hospital, Sudarshana, Amrutha hospital.
This, however, has led to a tit-for-tat between local authorities and the private hospitals.
The private hospitals alleged that the district administration has asked them to halt admissions for a while, citing an oxygen crunch.
“They’ve asked us not to take patients because they’re not able to supply the required oxygen. So, it has been a week now,” Raghavendra of the Care and Cure hospital said. The facility has 40 oxygen beds and only two patients.
Denying the allegations, District Collector Gandhan Chandrudu said that the private hospitals were free to procure oxygen from anywhere they want.
The primary source of oxygen for Anantapur is the Jindal Plant in Bellary, Karnataka.
“There is no denying that Anantapur has an oxygen shortage. Our major source, the Jindal plant, has tightened supply to us due to the increased demand in Karnataka and other states,” Chandrudu said. “We only stopped supply to those hospitals that had a record of showing a fake list of patients under Aarogyasri scheme and using oxygen for others.”
There are about 55 private hospitals in the district treating Covid patients, of which, 19 have been empanelled to admit patients under state’s flagship health scheme — Aarogyasri — meant for people from low income groups. At least 50 per cent of beds in empanelled hospitals have to be kept aside for patients under the Aarogyasri scheme, the bills for which will be reimbursed by the state government.
According to District Forest Officer Jagannath Singh, who is assisting the oxygen monitoring committee, there are three major private agencies that supply oxygen to most of Anantapur’s private hospitals. The committee is now acting as a mediator between the agencies and the hospital.
“We have set up one nodal officer for every hospital and formed WhatsApp groups. The officer looks at requirements and puts in the group and the private agency will only then supply oxygen to the hospital,” Singh said. “There is no direct dealing. We’ve done this primarily because the black market really picked up and we wanted to curtail it.”
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‘District in better shape now’
Collector Gandhan Chandrudu told ThePrint that for all its troubles, the medical infrastructure has improved in Anantapur over the past year.
“Anantapur is a district that has a medical infrastructure deficit. One that is extremely backward and in poor condition,” Chandrudu said. “We have the same cases as Vizag city but not even 1/10th of their infrastructure.”
He, however, added that it is still in a lot better position than what it was in 2020.
From 14 ICU beds in 2020, the district administration has increased it to 250, oxygen beds have increased to 1,200 from literally zero and oxygen storage capacity increased from zero to 56,000 litres, according to Chandrudu.
A facility with 300 oxygen beds is being set up at the Super Speciality Hospital (one of the major government facilities treating Covid patients) and another 500-bedded hospital is coming up in Tadipatri, he added.
(Edited by Arun Prashanth)
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