HC to govt: Endeavour immediately to operationalise COVID facility at IHBAS

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Friday directed the Delhi government to make an endeavour to create and immediately operationalise a COVID facility at the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (IHBAS), as proposed by it, in view of the acute shortage and severe demand for beds to treat coronavirus patients.

Justice Prathiba M Singh directed the Heath department of the Delhi government to process the proposal sent by IHBAS on May 6 to make available 60 to 80 of its beds, out of a total of 236, to create a COVID facility.

"If any additional measures are required to be taken for making the 60 to 80 beds at IHBAS as a specialised/ designated COVID facility, the same shall be done by the GNCTD in coordination with the hospital authorities.

"Further, an endeavour shall be made to immediately operationalise the said COVID facility at IHBAS, as per the applicable protocols and norms," the court said and listed the matter for hearing on May 13.

The issue of beds being available at IHBAS had come up during the hearing of a plea by the son of an 83-year-old man who was admitted at the institute for a neurological condition and was later found to be COVID positive.

As the institute was not a designated COVID facility, IHBAS wanted the patient shifted to a COVID hospital and the patient's son moved the high court to seek directions that he be not moved from there.

During the hearing in the first half of the day, when the court came to know that IHBAS has a capacity of 236 beds of which only around 50 were occupied, it asked the Delhi government why it had not been converted into a COVID facility.

"We are talking of a hospital right in the middle of the city. We are struggling to find beds for lawyers, judicial officers apart from the general public and they (IHBAS) have a huge facility which is being hardly used. We cannot keep a hospital empty like this," the court said.