While discussing the health infrastructure in villages and small cities of Uttar Pradesh, the court used a famous Hindi saying – “Ram Bharose” (at God’s mercy).
The Allahabad High Court on Monday, while discussing the health infrastructure in villages and small cities as the state battles second wave of Covid-19, used a famous Hindi saying – “Ram Bharose” (at God’s mercy).
While hearing a petition demanding better care for Covid patients in the state, a two-judge bench of Justices Siddharth Varma and Ajit Kumar made the observation: UP’s “entire medical system”, pertaining to smaller cities and villages, can only be taken to be like a famous Hindi saying ‘Ram Bharose‘ (at the mercy of God) “.
The court made the aforementioned observation noting the submissions of a three-member committee that looked into the alleged disappearance of a patient from the district hospital in western Uttar Pradesh’s Meerut town in April.
The patient Santosh Kumar was indeed admitted to the hospital and had collapsed in a restroom, the court observed. He was then “brought upon a stretcher and efforts were made to revive him, but he succumbed”.
It was further observed that his body was disposed of by doctors and medical staff as that of a person who was “unidentified”.
“It comes out to be a case of high degree (of) carelessness on the part of the doctors who were on night duty,” the court underlined.
The court also made some critical remarks on the state of medical care in Uttar Pradesh, noting: “So far as the medical infrastructure is concerned, in these few months we have realised that in the manner it stands today, it is very delicate, fragile and debilitated.”
The court also added: “When it cannot meet the medical requirements of our people in normal times, it definitely had to collapse in the face of the present pandemic.”
The court, in its hearing, also used an example from western UP’s Bijnor district.
The court, while taking note of the state government’s submissions, said: “To our utter surprise there is no level-3 hospital in district Bijnor. The three government hospitals have only 150 beds, whereas the total of number if BIPAP machines is 5 and High Flow Nasal Cannula is only 2”.
“If we take the population of rural areas to be 32 lakh, since there are only 10 Community Health Centers or CHCs, so one health centre has the load of 3 lakh people and against 3 lakh people it has only 30 beds. Meaning thereby, one CHC can cater the need of health care to only 0.01 per cent population and there is no BIPAP machine (a type of ventilator) or High Flow Nasal Cannula available.”
“Only 17 oxygen concentrators are available with 250 oxygen cylinders against 300 beds. There is no description as to what the capacity of oxygen cylinders is and whether in CHC there are trained hands to operate these oxygen cylinders and concentrators,” the court observed further.
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