The Covid-19 hospital in India so bad patients want to
get out
By Sandi
Sidhu, Julia
Hollingsworth, Clarissa
Ward,
Rishabh Pratap, Elizabeth Joseph and Tanya Jain, CNN
Updated 0119 GMT (0919 HKT) May 4, 2021
New
Delhi and Meerut, India (CNN) -- For three days, Goldi Patel, 25, went from hospital to
hospital in New Delhi's oppressive summer heat, frantically trying to find one
that would keep her husband breathing.
Four hospitals turned away Patel, who is
seven months pregnant with the couple's first child, before she finally found
one that would take him. But the level of care at Sardar Patel Covid Care
Centre and Hospital, a makeshift pandemic facility on the outskirts of the
capital, is so lacking that her husband is begging to leave.
Around Sadanand Patel, 30, people are
dying. He has barely any contact with doctors, and limited medicine. With 80%
of his lungs already infected, he's terrified of what happens if his condition
gets worse.
"I am very scared," Sadanand
said Saturday from his hospital bed, through labored breathing.
"If my health gets critical I don't think they will be able to save
me."
As coronavirus cases spiral in India, the country's health care system has
been stretched beyond breaking point. Beds, oxygen and medical workers are in short supply.
Some Covid patients are dying in waiting rooms or outside overwhelmed clinics,
before they have even been seen by a doctor.
Only some Covid-19 patients manage to
get admitted into India's overburdened hospitals. But once inside, some face a
different kind of terror: an absence of medical care or supplies as people die
around them.
Covid-19 patients wait outside Sardar Patel
Covid Care Centre, in New Delhi, on April 25.
Race against
time
In February officials ordered the closure of the Sardar Patel Covid
Care Centre, believing India had conquered the virus.
When it became abundantly clear that was not the case, the
500-bed facility reopened on April 26, to chaotic scenes.
Local media reported that despite huge lines of patients outside the hospital,
far fewer people were admitted than capacity. Senior officials from the Health
Ministry and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, who run the center, did not
respond to CNN's request for comment.
Sadanand was admitted the
day after the hospital opened. When Goldi
visited a few days later, the facility was crowded, she said.
A
view inside the Sardar Patel Covid-19 Care Centre, at Chhatarpur, on April 25,
2021 in New Delhi, India.
In the cavernous, warehouse-style
facility, some patients lie on beds made of cardboard. There is limited
medicine, and Sadanand said he had only interacted with a doctor once or twice
in three days since he was admitted last Tuesday. He watched two
men in beds nearby scream for medicine only to die within hours when their
oxygen appeared to run out.
By Saturday, his fifth day
in the center, at least five people around him had died, he said. One dead body lay on the bed
next to his for hours before it was removed.
India's Ministry of Health and Family
Welfare said last month that it would
"swiftly" expand the facility to 2,000 beds with oxygen
supplies to help address the city's lack of hospital space. About 40 medical doctors and 120
expert paramedics had already been dispatched to the center.
Workers
carry biodegradable cardboard beds in a makeshift ward at the Sardar Patel
Covid Care Centre and Hospital in New Delhi, India, on April 24, 2021.
But
that target doesn't tally with Sadanand's experience.
"The government thinks that they
have opened this hospital, the patients here are getting treated," he
said. "But actually,
nothing like that is happening."
The
doctors check on patients infrequently, Sadanand said. He's worried that if he needed medical
attention, he would be too ill to call for help. Sometimes he talks with a
patient in a nearby bed who advised him to get out of the center if he feels
even slightly better.
Sadanand
Patel at Sardar Patel Covid Care Centre.
"You
will die lying on your bed because there's no one to call the doctor," he
said.
Others
have had the same experience.
Sarita Saxena told CNN Friday her brother-in-law was admitted to the center after
being turned away by at least seven hospitals. She doesn't believe any doctors
are treating the patients -- the only people caring for them are family and
friends. Those people risk catching Covid as there are no walls within the center to stop the
spread.
Others outside the hospital are so
worried about the lack of care that they are trying to get their relatives
discharged.
Sadanand says he is so scared he
repeatedly asked a doctor to shift him to another hospital. He made the same
plea to his wife -- but no where else will take him, Goldi says.
"He was asking me to take him away
from this place, that he'll stay home, he doesn't feel good here and he's very
scared," Goldi said Saturday.
"I kept trying to explain that if
you stay here, at least you will get oxygen."
Inside the Sardar Patel Covid
Care Centre.
Dwindling
oxygen supplies
Lala Lajpat Rai Memorial Medical College (LLRM), a hospital in
the city of Meerut, in the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh, is inundated.
People are everywhere -- on stretchers, on tables, on the floor
-- moaning and desperate for oxygen. There are about 55 beds for 100 patients,
according to hospital staff. There are just five doctors. Some patients lie on
the floor.
One of those is 32-year-old mother-of-two Kavita, who has no
last name. She's been on the floor of the hospital for four days, struggling to
breathe. She says she hasn't received any oxygen, and has seen 20 people die.
"I'm getting anxious," she said. "I'm scared that
I'll stop breathing," she said.
Oxygen is a scarce commodity in India, which has reported more
than 2.5 million cases in
the past week.
Other countries have sent oxygen cylinders and concentrators to
India that can help produce oxygen, and the government is ferrying supplies
around the country using its train network. Dr. Harsh Vardhan, the Minister for
Health and Family Welfare, said Thursday there was adequate oxygen in the
country and no need to panic.
"Oxygen was available in adequate quantity earlier and now
there is even more," he told reporters outside a hospital. "We have
so many more sources of oxygen available in the country ... Whoever needs
oxygen should get it."
A health worker wearing a
personal protective equipment suit attends a patient inside a banquet hall
temporarily converted into a Covid-19 coronavirus ward in New Delhi on May 1,
2021.
But hospitals are still struggling.
Some hospitals have tweeted SOS messages, tagging official
accounts as they plead for more oxygen to help patients gasping for air.
Family members of patients queue for hours outside oxygen
refilling centers, holding empty oxygen cylinders. Twelve people -- including a
doctor -- died at one New Delhi hospital Saturday after the facility ran out of
oxygen, according to Dr. SCL Gupta, the medical director of Batra Hospital.
Some hospitals have warned patients that if they want to be
admitted for treatment, they will have to source their own oxygen.
"We have now told patients before admitting them that they
may have to get their own oxygen supply in case of emergency if they are
admitted here," Poonam Goyal, a senior doctor at Panchsheel Hospital in
Delhi's north said Saturday.
Outside LLRM, relatives of patients paced back and forth as they
waited for news. Inside, LLRM administrator Dr. Gyanendra Kumar said the
hospital had enough oxygen, but they were short of staff.
"We are not refusing anyone," he said. "Before
coronavirus, I have never seen a crisis like this, but this crisis I think we
are managing properly."
Lack of medicine
Although Goldi Patel is relieved her husband is getting oxygen,
she's worried about his overall condition -- without medicine to treat his lung
infection, damage has spread to 80% of his lungs, a CT scan shows.
Whenever he sits up, he starts coughing violently and pain tears
across his chest, she said. In hospital, he's given food, water and oxygen but
little medicine -- hospital staff gave him antibiotics after she told staff she
would kill herself. On Friday, she went into the center to bring medicine to
her husband, who is the sole earner for their family.
Goldi
Patel outside the New Delhi hospital.
"Along with oxygen, the treatment
is just as necessary," Sadanand said. "You can't just live on the
hope that if you get oxygen you'll be fine."
Dr. Chandrasekhar Singha, a senior lead
consultant in pediatric critical care at Madhukar Rainbow Children's Hospital
in New Delhi, said a patient with infection on 80% of their lungs would need to
have their infection treated with antivirals, steroids and antibiotics, on top
of oxygen. "By giving oxygen you are buying some time," he said,
speaking generally, adding that 80% infection was "not looking good."
Every two or three hours, Goldi calls
her husband. They only talk for a few minutes before his breathing becomes
labored.
"It feels dangerous," she
said. "I don't make him speak too much. I am tense all day."
Goldi
and Sadanand Patel.
Goldi is scared for herself -- she's
seven months pregnant and doesn't know whether she has Covid. She has no
symptoms, but hasn't been tested as that would cost 900 rupees
($12). Still, she says, she needs to support her husband. Both of their parents
live in Uttar Pradesh, and they have no other support.
Both are frustrated at the authorities'
ineffective response. Sadanand said that if he thought he was being treated
properly, he wouldn't have involved his wife at all.
"If someone was admitted and their
treatment had started, then you would never want your pregnant wife to go
outside during Covid cases to (try to find a facility) for you," he said.
"In your mind, you will always be worried about what happens if she gets
coronavirus."
Julia
Hollingsworth wrote and reported from Hong Kong. Sandi Sidhu reported from Hong
Kong. Tanya Jain reported from Gurgaon, India. Elizabeth Joseph and Clarissa
Ward reported from Meerut, India. Vedika Sud, Manveena Suri, Swati Gupta and
Esha Mitra reported from New Delhi, India.
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