Rajasthan got 1,900 ventilators from Centre, only 500 installed: Health Minister Raghu Sharma | Jaipur News
The minister sounded the caution after the 500 ventilators that have been installed so far developed snags like sudden failure of oxygen sensors, poor level of PiO2, sudden drop is oxygen pressure and shut downs. Doctors have expressed “complete lack of faith” in the machines.
On Thursday, CM Ashok Gehlot had raised concern about the “malfunctioning” and “poor quality” of the ventilators and demanded the pruchase process be thoroughly investigated by the Centre.
Sharma told TOI, “We had received 1,500 ventilators from one company and 400 from another. Initially, 500 of them were installed but the company which was supposed to take care of their post-installation care and maintenance has shown ‘zero response’ to our calls.”
“These ventilators shut down abruptly, which was a major cause of concern raised by doctors. If the Union government has given responsibility to Company X or Y to give ventilators to the state governments, they should have also arranged for maintenance engineers too,” Sharma said.
Sharma added that the state health department has been constantly raising the issue with the Centre and the Union health ministry, but they have not yet provided any concrete solution. “Even on Wednesday, I had spoken to Union health minister Harshvardhan on the issue. He only jotted down the problems we are facing in terms of ventilators. So, I will suggest BJP MPs and MLAs not to blow things out of proportion. If they are concerned, they too should speak to the Union government on the issue,” he added.
Secretary (medical education) Vaibhav Galaria said, “We have spoken with the engineers of the maintenance company and found that they are not qualified enough to clear the technical snags. Also, we were told that for Rajasthan the company had given 11 engineers, but we found only 5-6 on the field. This has been a long pending issue that needs to be resolved soon so that these ventilators can be properly utilised.”
