Become 'Carpatathia' that saved Titanic passengers from dying: Gujarat HC

Invoking the tragic incident of British ship Titanic that sunk in the Atlantic sea over a century ago, Gujarat High Court on Saturday cited an example of one of the three ships, furthest from the sinking Titanic, that came to the rescue of the humans and said, "We all should become 'Carpathia', the ship that was determined to fight all odds, and help the most vulnerable as a community at a time of chaos resulted out of global pandemic coronavirus.

The high court's observation came while hearing a set of petitions related to the COVID-19 situation in the state. The division bench led by justice J B Pardiwala came down heavily on the state government, particularly health minister and bureaucrats, for not tackling the situation properly. The bench was unhappy with the state government's way of handling the situation at civil hospital, Asarwa, in Ahmedabad where over 45% of state's total deaths have been reported by May 22.

The bench termed the hospital, that claims to be one of Asia's largest hospitals, as worst than a "dungeon". The hospital has reported 377 deaths till Saturday evening out of 829 deaths from coronavirus reported across the state. In Ahmedabad alone, 669 patients have died. The bench has noted that the civil hospital is in "very bad shape" and situation did not improve for last two months despite appointment of IAS officers like Pankaj Kumar, Milind Torwane and Jayanti to oversee the management.

The court has raised question over role of health minister Nitin Patel (who is also deputy chief minister). The order states, "We wonder, how many times the Health Minster of the State has visited the Civil Hospital at Ahmedabad so as to keep a watch or take stock of what is going on at the Civil Hospital. Does the Health Minister of the State of Gujarat has any idea about the problems which the patients, doctors, nursing staff and other employees are facing as on date?"

The high court has also sought answer from the state government about eight top private hospitals including Apollo, Zydus, K D Hospital, Global Hospital, UN Mehta Hospital among others as to why these hospitals are not in the list of those hospitals which have agreed to treat COVID-19 patients. The court asked the government to take action against those hospital refusing to comply. The court has also stated that testing prior to discharge must be made mandatory which the state has stopped for more than a week.

The order also reveals that the state government has stopped private laboratories to test samples and the government has decided to do "gatekeeping for private lab." It says the state has enough capacity of lab testing. However, the order also mentions, a recent statement made by - IAS officer Rajeev Gupta, who has overall charge of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, that “more number of tests which lead to 70% of the population testing positive for COVID-19, thereby leading to fear psychosis.” The order reads "this should not be a ground to refuse or restrict the testing."