Nashik hospital oxygen leak: ‘Saw people take cylinders from the dead, use them to revive kin’

WATCHING PEOPLE snatch oxygen cylinders from the bedside of lifeless sufferers to try to revive their very own relations, and doing the identical for his personal dying grandmother was a “dehumanising” second, recalled 23-year-old Vicky Jadhav. His grandmother, 65-year-old Sugandha Thorat, was amongst not less than 24 sufferers who died after oxygen provide was affected because of a leakage in the primary storage tank at Nashik’s Dr Zakir Hussain Hospital on Wednesday.
“Seeing people die in front of your eyes in less than an hour is traumatic. But I can’t get over the sight of watching people clamouring to take away oxygen cylinders from the beds of dead patients and trying to use them to revive their own loved ones. Even I tried to do that but it was of no use,” mentioned Jadhav.
Thorat was in a crucial stage along with her oxygen saturation at simply 38 when Jadhav walked into the hospital at 10 am to satisfy her. But he realised she was not receiving oxygen and raised an alarm with the employees, he mentioned.
“When I told them that the system was not working they went to check the system and then detected a leak. As soon as that happened there was panic on the third floor where most of the critical patients were kept with the staff bringing out jumbo cylinders to help patients,” mentioned Jadhav.

However, the jumbo cylinders have been no substitute for the high-volume air circulation of the tank and plenty of crucial sufferers couldn’t survive within the absence of respiratory help.
“It was chaos as doctors and nurses tried to revive patients. Relatives rushed into the ward after hearing something had gone wrong…When we realised that the oxygen had run out, relatives including me, clamoured to get these cylinders from the bedsides of patients who were being given oxygen and had died,” mentioned Jadhav.
Many gathered up their relations from their beds and tried to take them in rickshaws and personal autos to adjoining hospitals. But just a few like Nitin Welukar, whose brother and mom have been in the identical ward, couldn’t achieve this.

“My mother was to be discharged tomorrow while my brother Pramod was to be discharged four days later. He was hale and hearty when I walked in this morning with his food. In less than two hours, he died in front of my eyes pleading for help and I could not do anything for him,” mentioned Welukar about his 45-year-old brother.
Meanwhile, the hospital administration mentioned the employees did all that they might to revive the crucial sufferers however sudden lack of high-flow oxygen was deadly for the critically ailing.
“We deployed jumbo cylinders as well as dura cylinders available at the hospital. Cylinders from adjoining hospitals were also procured. However, these cylinders could not be substituted for the high-flow oxygen that critical patients require which eventually caused their deaths,” mentioned a nurse who didn’t need to be named.

The hospital managed to make sure the security of greater than 100 different sufferers similar to Rajesh Kanade, who has been in hospital for 5 days. His spouse Sharda Kanade was with him when “there was panic in the hospital” following the leak. “A nurse came over to my husband’s bed and asked him not to panic. She also gave him oxygen through a cylinder for some time,” she mentioned.
Those who misplaced their family members now blame the administration. “I don’t want to blame the doctors and the nurses, they did all that they could. My anger is against the administration which failed to ensure that the system they set up was safe and functional,” mentioned Jadhav.