A rope tied across the hallway and a handwritten note attached to it sets the boundary for the isolation ward on the first floor of the six-storeyed New Tower Block of the Government Stanley Medical College Hospital. While the note declares it a “prohibited area”, a cross-section of doctors say the hospital missed out on crucial guidelines in ensuring infection control and safety of its own healthcare personnel when symptomatic patients started to come in.
The isolation ward now has four patients, including two Chinese nationals, under observation for symptoms of the novel coronavirus (nCoV), but the hospital was not prepared to handle them, said the doctors.
Some of them, including residents, went on to air their grievances in writing on Friday. While expressing their readiness to work, they demanded proper isolation and quarantine wards, as per Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organisation guidelines, and adequate safety equipment for all healthcare workers at the hospital.
A congested space
On February 5, two Chinese nationals who approached the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (RGGGH) for screening were sent to the Government Stanley Medical College Hospital, and later admitted to its isolation ward, close to midnight. Two city students, who had returned from China, reported to the hospital with cold and cough, and were admitted for observation.
The hospital is known for the heavy inflow of patients and their attendants, and remains congested for most part of the day; the New Tower Block is no exception. It houses trauma, casualty and emergency departments on the ground floor, while the first floor, where the isolation ward is located, also has the intermediate care unit and new admission ward. The remaining floors have wards of departments including medicine and nephrology, said doctors.
“This is no place for having an isolation ward. We have hundreds of persons walking in and out everyday. By not ensuring proper arrangements, we are putting the lives of healthcare workers, patients and visitors at risk,” a doctor said.
To start with, doctors claimed that the erstwhile dengue ward was haphazardly fumigated and converted into a ward for nCoV, without proper arrangements in place. The patients were triaged into the common admitting ward, along with other newly-admitted patients of the day, where they remained for several hours before being shifted to the isolation ward, he added.
“Only one lift works at night. The patients were taken in the common public lift. In fact, one of them was taken through the common pathway to the X-ray room, with utter disregard for infection control,” another doctor said.
“We are ready to work in the isolation ward. But we have stated that we will not work until they provide us proper personal protective equipment. On the first day, some of the doctors on duty were given kits meant for handling HIV/AIDS patients. No N95 masks were provided,” a junior doctor said. A few hospital workers who had access to the isolation ward were spotted wearing regular masks.
A health official said the two Chinese nationals were sent from RGGGH to the Stanley Hospital, as the isolation ward in the former was being fumigated. The official said that all arrangements were in place and adequate personal protective equipment was available. Hospital authorities said that there was no reason for such apprehensions, and that they were taking adequate safety measures.
