The National Human Rights Commission on Wednesday said it is yet to receive a response from the Delhi Government on its notice seeking a report about the alleged death of four patients at Sushruta Trauma Centre due to cutting off of oxygen supply in its Intensive Care Unit on December 12.
The Commission said it had taken suo motu cognisance of the reports about the incident and had issued a notice to the Delhi Government through its Health Secretary calling for a detailed report in the matter within two weeks.
“No response”
However, it said “no response” has been received from the Delhi Government thus far. Incidentally, the Delhi Government had recently announced that following the submission of a report by the committee constituted to look into the incident, it has blacklisted the oxygen supplying firm.
But the NHRC is yet to the formally informed about the developments. The Commission observed that as per some recent reports, “the hospital authorities said that contractor in-charge of maintaining oxygen supply failed to ensure that there were enough backup cylinders”.
Further, NHRC said: “Quoting Additional Medical Superintendent of the hospital it was also reported that oxygen supply was first snapped for 5-7 minutes since the pressure in the only cylinder in service was critically low. It took the representative of the private company another five minutes to replace the cylinder.”
Only a single helper
Observing that as per this report “on the fateful night only a single helper was in the hospital instead of three, including one technician, whose services were to be provided by the private contractor,” the Commission said: “He too was not aware that 11 oxygen cylinders were to be kept on one side of ICU and another 10 on the other side and that all the cylinders should be functional.”
