Last Updated on November 9, 2021 at 10:44 am
It has come to fore that ventilators provided to SMHS Hospital in Srinagar supplied under the PM CARES Fund have found to be defective.
RTI activist Balvinder Singh said that atleast165 ventilators were procured with the help of the PM Cares Fund and sent to Sri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital, Srinagar, were found to be defective.
RTI activist Balvinder Singh said that he had filed RTI in the office of Principal Commissioner, Health and Medical Education Department to know about the functioning of ventilators of different bands supplied to J&K under PM CARES Fund.
He said that GMC Srinagar especially Head of Department Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicines (GMC Srinagar) clearly shared information about defective ventilators of three different makes and brands which were supplied to them under PM CARES Fund for the better patient care management.
The department mentioned in the RTI reply that all these ventilators were returned to Medical Superintendent SMHS Hospital due to compressor /heat up problems, which resulted in sudden shutdown of these ventilators and even could not provide a support to patient care management.
Also, Singh said that three Agva ventilators installed in SMHS Hospital are non-functional due to display was not working properly and problems in generating tidal volume.
“As far as the ventilators of DHAMAN-III were concerned, the HOD stated in the reply that 125 ventilators of this make have been kept at DRDO Hospital, Srinagar. Out of 125 ventilators, two were kept at SMHS Hospital for trial run in order to ascertain their efficacy. They were also found defective and thus were not feasible for patient care,” said the RTI activist.
“Beside 22 Agva ventilators have been kept at DRDO Hospital in Srinagar for trial,” he added.
He added that it is a request to Chief Justice of J&K High Court to take this matter and direct to the Chief Secretary J&K to constitute a committee of experts to examine the functioning of all the ventilators installed in various health institutions of JK UT supplied under PM Cares.
