A week ago, a head injury patient with an intra-tracheal tube was sent to Victoria Hospital at 1 am from National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (Nimhans) for immediate admission in the intensive care unit.

The patient was moved to casualty as the ICU at Victoria Hospital was fully occupied. He was finally shifted to the ICU at 4 pm next day. “He was critical and I don’t know if he survived, We were unable to immediately accommodate him in the ICU as it was full,” said Medical Superintendent Victoria Hospital, H C Nanjundappa.

The Government hospital has a five-bedded ICU with five ventilators. There were originally 10 beds with 10 ventilators. Out of them five ventilators became dysfunctional.

Hands are tied

“We are hardly able to accommodate our own patients in the ICU. On top of it, we are under a lot of pressure from Nimhans and other private hospitals to take in their patients in the ICU. We don’t want to refuse anyone but our hands are tied,” he added.

On an average daily, Victoria Hospital receives at least four to five neuro-medical cases from Nimhans. “Our difficulty is that we don’t have qualified neuro surgeons in the hospital. How are we supposed to take care of them? And there are minimum two patients from corporate hospitals every night seeking admission in the ICU.

Most of the time, they have to wait for 10 to 12 hours, before we are able to accommodate them there. There’s a lot of pressure from outside to give priority to private hospital patients,” said Dr Nanjundappa. Patients are shifted from private hospital ICUs to Victoria Hospital because of cost factor.

At Victoria, the ICU charge with ventilator is zero to minimal depending upon the economic status of the patient. In corporate hospitals it varies from Rs 3,000 to Rs 10,000 per day.

The state of Lady Curzon and Bowring Hospital is worse. The hospital has no ICU. There’s only one ventilator, which is used for post operative cases.

The hospital originally had four ventilators but three of them became dysfunctional. Repeated requests to have them replaced have landed the hospital files in bureaucratic junkyard.

The newly constructed trauma care centre at Bowring Hospital is a mere skeleton waiting to get fleshed.

The hospital authorities have requested the Government to grant them 10 ventilators for the Centre. “It will take some time for the files to move,” said an official source. In the absence of an ICU, Bowring Hospital sends its patients to Victoria Hospital or some other private hospital.

No staff

Nimhans, a centrally-funded leading psychiatric institute is crumbling under the weight of patient inflow and lack of supporting staff. “We are compelled to send some of our neuro-medical cases to Victoria Hospital as we have practically no staff!” said a source in Nimhans. He added that the institute is reeling under a crunch of paramedical and technical staff.

“We receive at least 10-12 neuro medical cases per day but our capacity is to cater to only two to three cases per day. The sanctioned strength of nursing staff is 200 whereas the requirement is of at least 800 nurses. We have sent innumerable requests to the Government but they have done nothing to recruit more nursing and technical staff,” he added.