Chandigarh: For some 18 agonising hours, relatives of a 28-year-old man desperately squeezed a rubber bag – a manual resuscitator – while travelling across 110km, looking for a ventilator. A healthcare system that has run out of breath left the man hanging between life and death.“Our ordeal began at 6:30pm on May 1 when my brother was assaulted on his head with a sickle in Samrala in Punjab,” recalled Harpreet, the patient’s brother. “We rushed him to a private hospital in Ludhiana where he was intubated and then taken to Govt Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), Chandigarh.Their nightmare was just beginning. When they reached GMCH around 1am, the family was told that no bed equipped with a ventilator was vacant. Within the next hour, he was shifted to PGI where they ran into a bureaucratic hurdle. No coordinating doctor was present to take over the critical case.For three hours, the relatives manually pumped an ambu bag as they waited in vain for a bed. They alleged that the doctors at the emergency asked them to take Manpreet back since no bed was likely to be vacated soon.They left, only to rush to GMCH at 6am with Manpreet now in respiratory distress. His condition had visibly deteriorated on the way to the hospital. But GMCH turned them away once again, sending them to PGI.It was only on Saturday afternoon, following TOI’s intervention, that a ventilator was finally made available and the patient moved to the ICU.This case has shaken the authorities. Director principal of GMCH, Dr Ravneet Kaur, told TOI that the hospital would procure more ventilators while PGI director Prof Vivek Lal promised they would ensure “man-to-man mapping” so that doctors personally coordinate during critical referrals.Local neurosurgeons have suggested a real-time, centralised pool of all public and private ICU beds in the city to prevent such distressing cases in future. Whether this wake-up call is enough for the authorities to act remains to be seen.
