Even MLA unable to help as beds get scarce in Bengaluru

On Saturday, Ayaaz, a mechanic on SP Road and living in Illyas Nagar, was waiting outside Vydehi Hospital for a bed for his 39-year-old Covid-19 positive wife. He had travelled from Banashankari to Vydehi Hospital in Whitefield. But by the time he got there, the bed was allocated to an emergency patient.

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Last week, 68-year-old Abdul Kareem didn’t find a bed with a ventilator and died by the time he did. Farha Tabassum (32) was tested on June 26 and got her results only nine days later, on July 4. Her father died just last week due to Covid-19.

Jayanagar MLA Soumya Reddy spent Friday night calling hospital after hospital with no response. If they did, they said there were no beds with oxygen or ICU beds. From a commoner to an MLA who can pull strings, people are scrambling for beds across Bengaluru.

Ayaaz told DH on Saturday afternoon: “We got my wife’s positive reports on Friday at 6 pm from a BBMP fever clinic and have been searching for beds since then. We had been told that there is a bed at Vydehi Hospital, but after we came, we were asked to wait as an emergency patient was given the bed. The BBMP enquired where we are and asked us to call 108 if her condition becomes critical.”

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Shahid, Tabassum’s brother, told DH: “Just last week, my father died of Covid. We tried Bowring Hospital, Marthas Hospital, Shifaa Hospital, and three other hospitals after we got my sister's test reports this morning, before the BBMP intervened and got us a bed.”

Sixty-eight-year-old Kareem’s son said that his father was sent to KC General Hospital and that there was nobody in the isolation ward to assist him. “There was no oxygen given to him. The entire night we hunted for hospitals for ICU beds, but because we didn’t have a Covid positive report, no hospital was willing to take in my father.”

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“We were told the Covid test would take 48 hours. We still don’t have our father’s Covid test report. We don’t have a cause of death report,” Kareem’s son 34-year-old Sadath Ali told DH. Sadath is a sales professional in a private company. The death of his father has left his mother, two elder brothers, and two sisters broken.