J&K’s Health and Medical Education has found itself in the dock after details obtained under the Right to Information (RTI) Act suggested that at least 165 “faulty” ventilators were supplied to the Union Territory’s hospitals last year with PM CARES fund.
In a reply to an RTI application filed by activist Balvinder Singh, the department of the Anaesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine of the Shri Maharaja Hari Singh (SMHS) Hospital has pointed out that 165 ventilators — 37 from the Bharat Ventilators, three from the Agva Ventilators and 125 from the Dhaman-III — were found to be faulty.
All machines from Bharat Ventilators were returned due to compressor and heat up problems, which resulted in their sudden shutdown, the department wrote in its reply. “These ventilators do not support patient care management.”
It also pointed out that machines of the Agva Ventilators were “non-functional due to problems like display not working and problem in generating tidal volume”.
Trial run of two ventilators out of 125 from Dhaman-III stationed at the DRDO Hospital, Khanmoh, Srinagar, found that the tidal volume had not generated required Flo2 and and thus could not be put to use for patient care. The ventilators stopped automatically, and put patients at risk, the Srinagar hospital pointed out.
“Though officials of the H&ME Department in Jammu division also admit that the ventilators supplied to them are not of good quality and not functioning properly, they did not give exact details in response to my RTI query for reasons best known to them,” Mr. Singh said at a press conference in Jammu on Monday.
He claimed that installation of these defective ventilators “could be one of the major reason for the high COVID-19 mortality rate in Jammu division as compared to Kashmir”.
Meanwhile, sources said the H&ME department was likely to probe the procurement of these ventilators.
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti termed the revelations a big scam. “The ventilators bought through the ‘PM Cares’ fund are lying defunct in Srinagar. Nobody is answerable to the people,” she said.