See How Delhi Hospital Saved 100 Lives just in time

On a gloomy Saturday afternoon, the distraught staff at the Saroj Super Specialty Hospital in Delhi collapsed and began to pray anxiously as the lives of more than 100 patients hung by a thread amid the rapidly depleting oxygen supply.

An oxygen tanker truck had arrived at the hospital after staff spent hours running for supplies and making frantic calls to the government and police.

But the tanker was unable to enter the area where the hospital’s oxygen tank is located. The problem: it’s larger than the normal size. The solution: an excavator, which knocked down part of a ramp. Also, read Death toll rises to 11 in avalanche in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli.

The dramatic scenes began to unfold when the hospital ran out of oxygen in the afternoon and the vendor’s supply never arrived.

The situation was strained by fears of an impending tragedy similar to that at the Jaipur Golden Hospital, where 20 patients died amid an oxygen shortage.

“We really didn’t know what to do,” said Pankaj Chawla, the hospital’s owner.

“This was the time when we started to discharge patients. We told the families that we do not have oxygen and that they can take their patients to other healthcare facilities,” said Pankaj Chawla.

The hospital, run by a trust, discharged 34 patients during this time. Since the rest used ventilators, their families were asked to fix oxygen cylinders.

“Most of the patients said, ” We will stay … it’s the same situation everywhere. Let’s see what happens. ” Thirty-four were medically fine to go,” said Pankaj Chawla.

The hospital went to the superior court to obtain an urgent relief order, but help has not yet arrived immediately.

By the time the order arrived and was implemented, things were changing by the minute, according to defender Prab Sahay Kaur, who represented the hospital in court.

The facility borrowed oxygen cylinders from various healthcare facilities, while some Delhi government officials worked in the background. Later, the government assigned him a joint tanker truck.

“The tanker truck came to the hospital, but it was so big that it couldn’t get into the area where our LMO (liquid medical oxygen) tank is,” said Pankaj Chawla.

“We started taking down a wall and a ramp with jackhammers and everything we had, but it was taking time and the tanker had to go to Tirath Ram Shah hospital.”

Government officials told the hospital that the tanker would return after an hour.

“That’s the moment when everyone thought that nothing could save us. All of us, my doctors, my staff, started crying. We were also running out of luck,” recalled Pankaj Chawla.

Hospital staff and some police officers frantically rushed to fill up some cylinders.

Twenty cylinders were brought to the hospital on a Delhi Transport Corporation bus. Those cylinders lasted 40 minutes and really saved the day, he said.

“In the meantime, we called the mayor, the fire department … we brought a JCB (excavator), which broke part of the wall and the ramp,” said Pankaj Chawla.

Police returned the tanker after delivering oxygen at Tirath Ram Shah Hospital.

“It could have been another Jaipur Golden tragedy, maybe bigger … All this time, families were there, helping us,” said Pankaj Chawla.

Currently, there are more than 100 patients in the hospital, most of them on oxygen support.

The owner thanked Prab Sahay Kaur for helping them, saying that it was “mainly because of her that we were able to achieve what we did”.

Prab Sahay Kaur compared the entire incident to a horror movie.

He said the tanker, which went to another hospital, was taking a long time to return and all the ventilators had been completely emptied.

Therefore, each of the 53 patients had to be removed from the ventilator and manually placed on BiPAP machines. Doctors were monitoring each patient, trying to control oxygen pressure and make sure the patient is stable, he said.

In half an hour, the oxygen cylinders would have run out and the cylinders provided by the Delhi government would not be enough either, he said, as they literally lost all hope.

At the last minute, he added, the tanker arrived, lives were saved and a tragedy averted.