As Bengaluru cries for ICU beds, over 100 lie unused in govt hospitals

Scores of Covid-19 patients in the city spend each day desperately waiting for the availability of an ICU bed. Ironically, over 100 such beds are lying unused due to a shortage of medical staff or other issues.

At the government-run KC General Hospital, there are 100 such beds in a portable ICU while at the Lady Bowring and Curzon Hospital, there are another 10 unused ICU beds, according to officials.

About 50 of the beds at KC General are said to be reserved for patients with Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI) while the remaining 50 are otherwise ICU beds.

The medical superintendent, Dr B R Venkateshiah, said that the beds were ready to be used but that medical recruitments are ongoing. “We have recruited some doctors and nurses, and other recruitments are ongoing. We are hoping to open the beds for patients in a few days,” he said.

Just how many vacancies are potentially there? KC General said that a total of 87 positions need to be filled, out of which, a few have been filled. At Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital, the unused beds are not due to a staff crunch but instead, an infrastructural problem, said Dr Manoj Kumar, the director of the hospital.

“There is a problem fitting in six-kilolitre oxygen tanks on the premises,” he said, adding that this could limit the total number of ICU beds at the facility from 30 to 20.

Dr P G Girish, Director of Medical Education, nevertheless clarified that four to five doctors are due to join the annexe facility from Wednesday, which he said will give Bowring “sufficient doctors to run the facility as per their requirement.”

“At KC General, the doctor vacancies will be announced on Wednesday,” he added.

Government officials said they see the recent Supreme Court order dictating final-year MBBS graduates to compulsorily work on Covid duties for a year as being one solution to the staff crunch.

“Even private college medical students have been included in the order to work for a year.

This will be announced by Wednesday and this should give the system another thousand-plus doctors across Karnataka. Wherever there is a vacancy they can go work for one year,” he said.

The issue of vacancies in nursing is another quandary that has no immediate solution. Dr Girish said that the problem was magnified in March when many nursing interns went home before the lockdown and have not returned.

“We are offering some attracting financial incentives including a Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 Covid allowance to get nurses to return,” he said.