A COVID-19 patient admitted in the ICU of a government hospital near Mudnal on the outskirts of Yadgir died during a power outage in the hospital in the early hours of Friday. The deceased, a 30-year-old man from Nagarabandi village, was admitted to the hospital three days ago.
His family members said disruption in oxygen supply caused by the power outage was the reason for his death. They said realising the patient’s difficulty in breathing, they tried their best to revive him but failed.
District surgeon S.B. Hiremath, however, dismissed the charge saying that the death was not caused by the power outage as the oxygen supply was not disrupted even after the outage. As per information provided by officers in the Health and Family Welfare Department and engineers in Gulbarga Electricity Company Ltd., there was a power outage for one and a half hours.
Efforts to resume power supply using a local generator went in vain as the generator had run out of fuel, pushing the 250-bed hospital into darkness and patients into misery.
Attenders of patients in the hospital switched on their mobile phone lights to manage things.
Raghavendra D., executive engineer of Gescom, told The Hindu that a technical problem on the hospital premises led to the power outage. “Oxygen supply in the hospital is not dependent on electricity as it functions independently on mechanical power. When the power outage occurred, only the usage of fans and lights was affected. It did not have any effect on oxygen supply.”
