One meeting in one month, Delhi govt O2 panel was stalled before it got off the ground

Proposal to set up expert medical panel to look into oxygen shortage during 2nd Covid wave is rejected by Delhi L-G, opposition says Kejriwal govt and L-G 'playing football' over the matter.

Representational Image | File photo of people waiting in queue in Delhi to get oxygen cylinders refilled during the second Covid wave | Suraj Singh Bisht | ThePrint

New Delhi: Proposed by the Aam Aadmi Party-led Delhi government and rejected by Delhi Lieutenant General Anil Baijal, the very existence of a six-member expert committee tasked to look into whether the oxygen shortage in the national capital during the second Covid wave caused hospital deaths, has been mired in controversy.

The panel has met just once since the Delhi government ordered it to be set up on 27 May. However, on 16 June, the Delhi government announced that the Centre had rejected the proposal for its formation. Meanwhile, panel members ThePrint spoke to said that since many of those who died were critical patients, with severe health complications, it would have been difficult to conclusively say their deaths were caused by the oxygen shortage alone.

The issue of the panel has also become a political flashpoint, with leaders of opposition parties terming the initiative an “eyewash” and accusing the Arvind Kejriwal government and the L-G of “playing football” over the deaths and compensation for families of victims.

The matter has gained even more significance given the ongoing controversy around the findings of an oxygen audit panel, set up by the Supreme Court in May, according to which Delhi sought four times the oxygen it required.

Investigating oxygen deaths

At the peak of the second Covid wave in the country in April-May, there were reports of deaths from hospitals across the national capital, allegedly caused by the severe shortage of oxygen in Delhi. At least 32 such deaths were reported.

On 27 April, the Arvind Kejriwal government had been directed by the Delhi High Court to form a panel to monitor the situation after 21 patients at north Delhi’s Jaipur Golden hospital died between 23 and 24 April, allegedly due to the lack of medical oxygen. The government formed the panel the next day to look into that case.

On 4 May, the Delhi government had denied before the high court that those deaths were a result of the oxygen crisis. It claimed that 20 of the deaths were due to pre-existing conditions and one was due to a lack of specific medicines.

The committee formed to look into those deaths had concluded that all 21 patients were critical and suffering from Covid-19. They said the patients were getting oxygen therapy or ventilation throughout their hospital stay, including at the time of resuscitation, and there was no mention of oxygen shortage in any of the case records.

A month later, however, on 27 May, the Delhi government issued an order to constitute a six-member committee to look into all deaths allegedly caused by the shortage of oxygen in hospitals across the national capital. The government had then also announced that it will give a compensation of Rs 5 lakh to families that lost members to Covid due to the oxygen shortage.

According to the 27 May order, a copy of which is with ThePrint, the committee was to meet twice a week.

A senior official in L-G Baijal’s office, however, told ThePrint that the “proposal has been rejected”.

Sources also pointed out that a committee constituted by the Supreme Court was already in place to audit oxygen requirements in Delhi.

“The Aam Aadmi Party-led government is playing politics. When there is already a panel in place for this [monitoring oxygen requirements], why would it constitute another one and create confusion,” the official in the L-G office said.

“This was a way to distract families of victims, by telling them they would be compensated based on findings of the committee members,” the official added.

According to Dr Naresh Kumar of Maulana Azad Medical College, the committee’s chairman, the panelists found out about the proposal for the panel being rejected through media reports. 

“We wouldn’t know what was going on in the back end. We met once because we received the orders from the Delhi government to do so, but this was before the proposal was rejected,” he told ThePrint.

Members of the committee, Dr A.C. Shukla, medical director, Mata Chanan Devi Hospital, and Dr J.P. Singh, MS, Tirath Ram Shah Charitable Hospital, also told ThePrint they had met only once, a fortnight ago, before they saw media reports about the proposal being rejected.

Panel members, on the condition of anonymity, also said they haven’t received any formal notification from the AAP government since the media reports emerged.

‘Death from lack of oxygen not easy to establish’

While Dr Kumar refused to comment on the outcome of that sole meeting held by the panel, one of the panel members, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told ThePrint that it was difficult to assess whether the deaths were caused due to the medial oxygen crisis. 

“It is difficult to establish or prove (that death was cause because of lack of oxygen), since one cannot overlook the fact that many of the patients enrolled in hospitals where these deaths were caused due to alleged oxygen shortage were severe Covid-19 cases,” said one of the panel members.

Touching on the criticality of the patients who died at Delhi hospitals during that time, another member said, “It isn’t that easy to ascertain whether oxygen shortage was related to the deaths. So many of these patients who died were in the ICU (which means they were critical). So to say that death occurred only due to oxygen shortage isn’t easy.”

The panel members also pointed to the fact that many of the patients who passed away at the time had health complications.

“Some of these were also patients suffering from pneumonia and Covid and hence their chances of death were anyway high. It is therefore not easy to assess whether they died because of the lack of oxygen (or some other cause),” the first member quoted above added.

‘Just an eyewash’

According to the order issued by the Delhi health department authorities, the committee was expected to check whether oxygen was being used judiciously by hospitals where the deaths occurred and steps taken by the hospitals to maintain sufficient oxygen supply.

A senior official of the Delhi health department told ThePrint, “If the L-G didn’t approve the proposal, we aren’t sure how to proceed or ask the committee to do its work.”

Opposition leaders, though, blame both the AAP government and the L-G for indulging in a political game over the deaths.

Congress leader Alka Lamba, a former AAP MLA, said: “The AAP government and the L-G will continue to play football and no family is going to get compensated this way.”

Lamba added that “the idea is also to fix responsibility, as there is no running away from the fact that deaths took place because oxygen didn’t reach these people. But of course they won’t let a committee come to that conclusion, as that would present the government in bad light. So, they keep constituting one committee after another, it’s just an eyewash.”

Member of parliament from north-east Delhi and BJP leader Manoj Tiwari also said that “compensation alone won’t help”.

“I have been saying this for a while now that the blame game needs to stop and we all need to sit together with all MPs and fix responsibility to not only compensate families but also prepare for a third Covid wave, as we can’t lose more lives,” Tiwari told ThePrint.  “Forming committees won’t solve the problem.”

(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)