The Delhi government has filed a report in the Delhi High Court, denying the death of 21 patients, due to the shortage of oxygen at city’s Jaipur Golden Hospital.
According to the report filed on May 3, the deaths occurred due to the critical condition of all patients, except one, who died due to lack of medicine.
The Division Bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Rekha Palli, on April 27, had asked the Delhi government to collect the information of the total deaths due to shortage of oxygen in the hospitals across the national capital.
Pursuant to this order of the court, the Delhi government on April 28, had constituted a four-member committee to examine the case sheets of all such patients and determine whether the cause of death was due to shortage of oxygen or otherwise; in addition to seeking data from all hospitals and nursing homes on such deaths.
Six hospitals and nursing homes sent their report on e-mail, in response to the query of the city government.
Documents reviewed by India Legal showed that the committee opined that all 21 patients at Jaipur Golden Hospital were sick/critical and suffering from COVID-19 infection.
The Delhi government stated in the report that all the reported patients were suffering from COVID-19 and were already very critical, either from the time of admission or during the course of hospital stay, even prior to the evening of April 23.
The committee said that many of the reported patients had one or multiple co-morbidity like heart disease, diabetes, DM, hypothyroidism and hypertension.
“There was no mention of shortage of oxygen in any of the case sheets and patients were given oxygen supplementation till last, based on the clinical requirement, as per records made available to the committee… The reason of death in all 21 cases has been uniformly mentioned as “respiratory failure” in the proforma submitted by the hospital”.
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The report further said, “However, the cause of death recorded in case sheets was different from the cause mentioned in the submitted proforma. There was no mention of oxygen shortage in either the submitted proforma, or in the case sheets,”
The committee also said that shortage of drug was recorded in the case sheet of one patient. However, shortage of oxygen, if any, was not recorded.