The next time you or any of your relatives go for a surgery at Hyderabad’s Gandhi hospital, do check if the cellphones with the surgeons have an inbuilt torch. With frequent power outages – there was one for over 7 hours on Friday between 3:30pm and 11 pm – the hospital relies heavily on back-up generators but it takes almost one minute for power to shift from raw supply to generator or from generator to generator.
When patients are in critical condition, you do not need a doctor to tell you that one minute is a very long time.
On Friday, 60 seconds of darkness enveloped operation theatres during which surgeons depended on light from their mobile phones. A surgery to remove an infected part of a patient’s intestine was among the many surgeries, being performed at that time.
“You cannot do anything if the power supply goes off in the middle of suturing a wound. So the surgeon’s reflex action is to take out the mobile phone and use that light,” says Dr CV Chalam, Incharge superintendent of Gandhi Hospital.
Why this power crisis has become critical is because 21 patients died on Friday. Opposition parties are demanding the Telangana health minister Dr Laxma Reddy’s head and allege that the death figure is actually 31. The hospital insists the 21 deaths were not because of power failure as all critical equipment like ventilators have a battery backup. They also point out that a 2 per cent casualty is acceptable for a major tertiary hospital like Gandhi that has 1400 patients.
Opposition parties which protested at Gandhi hospital however, allege that critical units like neonatal ICU and Respiratory ICU were affected. Drawing attention to the case of seven patients losing vision at the Sarojini Devi hospital earlier this month, Congress leaders wanted a probe ordered, during which they wanted the minister to step down, owning responsibility.
But even though blackouts reportedly are routine at Gandhi Hospital, the Telangana Southern Power Distribution Company has washed its hands off the problem on Friday, pointing out that the problem was with the electrical distribution room at the hospital and their generators.
Gandhi Hospital is one of the more new and modern hospitals built in Hyderabad. A situation like this at Telangana’s premier hospital does not do any good to the image of a medical tourism destination that the government wants to project for the city.
