Shopian, June 6: The Covid-19 patients requiring ventilators at District Hospital Shopian are being referred to territory care hospitals due to the non-availability of trained staff to run these life supporting machines.
Although four ventilators are available at the facility, they have not been put to use due to the lack of anaesthetic assistants and other technicians.
“We don’t have enough technical staff to run and monitor these machines,” said an official.
He said that the patients requiring ventilator support were usually sent to tertiary care hospitals in Srinagar.
At least 200 patients with Covid-19 complications have been admitted at District Hospital Shopian since the second Covid wave swept across India.
“Of them around 18 to 20 patients were sent to tertiary care hospitals,” said the official.
He said that many of them required ventilator support.
However, the official said that he did not know how many of them were put on ventilators after they had been referred.
Apart from the anaesthetic assistants, the slots of head lab assistant, ECG assistant and ward boys are lying vacant.
On Saturday, the district has reported 14 new Covid-19 cases, taking the total number of active positive cases to 1064. Presently, around 18 Covid-19 patients are under treatment in the hospital while the area recorded 15 Covid-related deaths since April this year.
“For the past many years we have been apprising the higher ups about the acute paucity of staff but nothing has been done so far,” said a medic.