हिंदी
State needs to run all ventilators besides ensuring availability of Oxygen and life saving medicines to reduce Covid fatality rate – Sikander Singh Maluka
Chandigarh, May 4 – The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) today asked chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh to recruit medical specialists needed to run new ventilators lying unused in the State on a war footing to ensure prompt availability of this life saving facility to Covid patients.
In a statement here, former minister Sikander Singh Maluka said it was heart wrenching that even though three hundred new ventilators had been received by the State since months they were not being used for want of staff. “In some cases they have not even been installed”.
Asking the State government to get its act together, Mr Maluka said the executive should act decisively when required. “This is an extraordinarily situation. Normal procedures should be set aside to recruit the needed staff and make all the ventilators functional as soon as possible”. He said while earlier there were reports of nearly 200 new ventilators not being put to use in Amritsar, a recent report had highlighted that eleven ventilators despatched to Muktsar were lying idle for want of staff. “New ventilators despatched to several government hospitals are also lying unused”, he added.
Stating that the fight against Covid was at a crucial stage, the SAD leader said any laxity now would prove very costly for the State. “We must ensure efficient running of all ventilators at our disposal as well as availability of medical oxygen and life saving drugs needed to combat Covid. Besides this more dedicated Covid beds need to be created even if by arrangement with private hospitals. “The chief minister should not shirk from allocating resources for this. This is the only way to reduce the fatality rate in the State which is double the national average and among the highest in the country”.
Mr Sikander Maluka also advised the chief minister to leave aside all politics for the moment. “This is not the time for politics or settling internal feuds in the Congress party. The SAD is ready to cooperate with the government as it has done earlier to save lives. Let us fight this scourge unitedly”, he added.
