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UDAIPUR: Even as positive cases continue to soar and hospitals face severe shortage of ventilators and oxygen, 95 ventilators are lying unused at the RNT Medical College here. These ventilators were sent to Udaipur by the Centre under the PM relief fund last year. The consignment was, however, faulty.
Some 24 ventilators were installed, but all of them stopped working after a few hours. Most of the ventilators have not yet been unpacked and installed in the wake of several that turned out faulty. The equipment have been lying unused for a year in the medical college storeroom.
According to sources, few ventilators were installed for serious patients, but all of them stopped working within three hours of installation. After Diwali, the pandemic situation normalised and so the faulty ventilators too became a forgotten thing and their repair or replacement was not taken on priority basis. Now with spurt in fresh cases and hospitals running short of ventilators and oxygen-supported beds, the forgotten ventilators made a re-entry in the scenario.
Leader of Opposition and Udaipur MLA Gulab Chand Kataria wrote to Union health minister Harsh Vardhan apprising him of the situation. Kataria said the company which manufactured the ventilators had sent a technical team to repair the fault but the problem has not been solved.
He said the state government too had been informed about the ventilators, but no action had been taken yet and patients were suffering. Kataria said if the details of the manufacturers were known, the follow-up would be done at the local level.
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