Prayers, police, and JCB: How Delhi's Saroj Hospital saved over 100 lives

On a gloomy Saturday afternoon the staff at the Saroj Super Specialty Hospital in Delhi broke down and started praying anxiously as lives of over 100 patients hung by a thread amid rapidly depleting oxygen supplyAn oxygen tanker had reached the hospital after the staff spent hours running around in search of supplies and making frantic calls to the government and police But it could not enter the area where the hospitals oxygen tank is The problem its largerthannormal size The solution an excavator which broke down a portion of a wallThe hospital ran out of oxygen in the afternoon and the supply from the vendor never came The situation was tense amid fears of a repeat of the tragedy at the Jaipur Golden Hospital where 20 patients died due to lack of oxygenWe really didnt know what to Pankaj Chawla the owner of the hospital said This was the time we started discharging patients We told families that we dont have oxygen and they can take their patients to some other healthcare facilities Chawla saidThe hospital run by a trust discharged 34 patients during this time Since the rest were on ventilators their families were asked to arrange oxygen cylinders Most of the patients said we will stay its the same situation everywhere Lets see what happens Thirtyfour were medically okay to go Chawla saidThe hospital went to the high court to get an order for urgent relief but help still did not come immediately It borrowed oxygen cylinders from various healthcare facilities while some Delhi government officials worked in the backgroundLater the city government allotted a tanker to it on a sharing basis The tanker came to the hospital but it was so big that it couldnt get into the area where our LMO liquid medical oxygen tank is Chawla said We started breaking down a wall and a ramp with electronic hammers and whatever we had but it was taking time and the tanker had to go to the Tirath Ram Shah HospitalGovernment officials told the hospital that the tanker would come back after an hour That is the time everybody thought nothing can save us All of us my doctors my staff started crying We were running out of luck too Chawla recalledThe hospital staff and some police personnel rushed to get some cylinders filled Twenty cylinders were brought to the hospital in a Delhi Transport Corporation bus Those cylinders lasted 40 minutes and actually saved the day he saidIn the meanwhile we called the mayor fire department brought in a JCB excavator which broke a portion of the wall and the ramp Chawla said The police brought the tanker back after delivering oxygen at the Tirath Ram Shah HospitalAt present there are over 100 patients at the hospital majority of them on oxygen support It couldve been another Jaipur Golden tragedy perhaps of a bigger size All this time the families were there helping us Chawla saidThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever