Dr Girish Tyagi, President of Delhi Medical Association said the bigger challenge would be for the small hospitals as they do not have enough space
NEW DELHI| On Monday while briefing the state Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal announced private hospitals and nursing homes to reserve 20% of their bed for coronavirus patients. Reacting to the announcement doctors warns that mixing Covid-19 patients in hospitals treating people with other ailments might lead to a further spread of the virus.
Strongly criticizing to this order, the private hospitals and doctors will be writing to the CM Arvind Kejriwal to review the decision.
Kejriwal while briefing said, “Government and private hospitals in Delhi have 4,500 beds for Covid-19 patients and out of these, only 2,000 are occupied.” Kejriwal further said that around 2,000 new beds have already been added in 117 private hospitals for Covid-19 patients.
On Sunday Health Minister Satyendar Jain said the Delhi government has directed private hospitals and nursing homes with a capacity of 50 beds to reserve 20% of their total bed strength for coronavirus patients.
Dr Girish Tyagi, President of Delhi Medical Association, reacting to this announcement said the bigger challenge would be for the small hospitals as they do not have enough space, handling both Covid-19 and non-COVID patients at the same time would become difficult and risky to all.
Hindustan Times quoted Dr Tyagi saying, “The bigger hospitals that have several blocks can manage to dedicate these beds. However, the challenge will be for smaller ones as they might not have enough space or separate entry and exits to ensure Covid-19 and non-COVID patients are segregated properly. This might lead to a spread of the infection within the hospitals.”
Giving examples of Italy and Spain, the countries which handled both COVID-19 and non-COVID patients together, Dr PK Bharadwaj, secretary, Delhi Voluntary Hospitals forum said, “We should learn from the experiences of other countries. In countries such as Italy and Spain, treating Covid-19 patients alongside non-COVID patients add to several hospitals becoming transmission hot spots.”
Dr Bharadwaj said, “If the government needs to take over beds in the private sector, instead of getting 2,000 beds in over hundred hospitals, they can take over a few of the bigger hospitals.”
The Delhi Medical Association will also be writing to the government to extend the health insurance for health care workers in the government sector to the private sector, ensure availability of PPE kits, masks, sanitisers, and respirators at government rates, and create a separate facility for treating health care workers with Covid-19.
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