Noida: While hospitals in Noida and Ghaziabad are running out of beds, people have been forced to find ways to get treatment of patients in their homes. With no support from government and administration, people have voluntarily started managing medical facilities at their end. RWAs of many high rise societies in Gautam Buddh Nagar and Ghaziabad have also started isolation bed facility with oxygen support for residents of society who are suffering from Covid and fail to get bed at hospitals.
With around two dozen hospitals, including five public hospitals with bed capacity of over 3,200 beds, people are getting turned away from hospital while VIP approaches also fail to arrange beds for critically sick patients. Luckily, if a person gets a bed at hospital, the acute shortage of oxygen and life saving injections and medicines needed during treatment is making the life difficult for the attendants to the patients as they have to make arrangements themselves. While private hospitals are charging exorbitant prices in the name of treatment, the government hospitals are turning patients away.
Administrative and health officials are clearly defying orders of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath who has said that no patient should be turned away from hospitals and if there is no bed available at government hospitals, arrangements should be made at private hospital by the administration. While speaking to the media, senior health and administrative officials have claimed that there is no crisis of beds, oxygen and medicines, the ground reality in vastly different.
A resident of Greater Noida West said that he called Noida's Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Dr Deepak Ohrie to request a bed for his ailing mother who is a critical Covid patient. "When I called the CMO, he bluntly said over the call that they don't have any bed in district and the we must go to government," he said while adding that the district's Covid integrated control room number was reached after several attempts while the tele caller too failed to provide details of any vacant bed in the district.
Moreover, the numbers floating on WhatsApp and other social media sites who claims to provide beds, oxygen and Remdesivir injections are either switched off or out of service. Millennium Post investigation showed that several phone numbers from the list floating at various social media platforms as well as the number of officials who are at Covid duty in GB Nagar and Ghaziabad district were switched off or not in use.
Apart from this, with the high number of cremations, Noida's Antim Niwas in sector 94 has been forced to deal with another challenge. A lot of kin are not coming to pick the remains of their dear ones after cremation. The Antim Niwas has not started preserving Asthis of the dead persons and are storing in boxes with details of deceased person over it. However, the Antim Niwas is too running out of space to keep the remains.
Meanwhile, amid bed crisis, residential societies such as Gaur Saundaryam, Homes 121, Stellar Jeevan in Greater Noida and Neo Scottish society and Nirala Eden park society in Ghaziabad have started isolation bed facility to treat Covid patients inside the community hall of their society. At present these societies are running bed with oxygen support and some essential medicines under the supervision of doctors and nursing staff.
Meanwhile, a total of 655 cases were reported in Gautam Buddh Nagar district on Monday taking the total number of cases to 36,662. With 406 patients getting recovered, the active cases stand at 6,300. 15 deaths were also reported due to Covid on Monday taking the death toll to 170. In Ghaziabad, 370 cases were reported . Two deaths on Moday took the death toll to 152.