The Private Hospitals and Nursing Homes’ Association (PHANA) on Tuesday alleged before the High Court of Karnataka that the government is supplying only 25% of the Remdesivir injections of the total requirement to private hospitals treating COVID-19 patients.
While claiming that private hospitals and nursing homes, particularly medium and small ones, are able to procure only 50% of the oxygen required to treat COVID-19 patients through private suppliers, PHANA has said that a war room, created by the government to ensure supply of oxygen, is not providing any help to the hospitals.
These submissions were made by H.M. Prasanna, president of PHANA, before a Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Abhay Shreeniwas Oka and Justice Aravind Kumar during the hearing of PIL petitions on issues related to COVID-19.
To a query by the Bench, Dr. Prasanna said that the government has huge stock of Remdesivir but it is not supplying them to private hospitals and due to this, the hospitals were rationing the injections by providing it to patients with severe COVID-19 conditions though both medium and severely infected patients require it.
To a query on oxygen supply, Dr. Prasanna said that hospitals are able to get 50% of oxygen while clarifying that there is no oxygen supply network set up either by the State government or the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike in the city. “A war room for oxygen supply is unresponsive and they have not provided any help,” he said, while pointing out that an IAS officer heads this war room.
Terming the situation alarming, the Bench asked the government to respond on these issues while noticing from the its statement that requirement of oxygen for COVID-19 patients in the State on April 30 would be 1,471 MT per day and the Centre has agreed to allocate 802 MT per day. The State has capacity of producing oxygen of 812 MT/ per day domestically, the government informed the court.
Meanwhile, the Bench directed the Union government to inform the HC on accommodating COVID-19 patients in hospitals of the Armed Forces in the city while noticing that Command Hospital has declined to allot any bed citing that it is treating COVID-19 patients of the Armed Forces from Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
