Goemkarponn Desk
PANAJI:
The Aam Aadmi Party slammed the Goa Govt for issuing a mortality bulletin to justify the increasingly high death toll in Goa. State Convener Rahul Mhambre said that the real cause of deaths in Goa is the critical shortage of treatment facilities such as Oxygen beds, ICU beds, and Ventilators.
Mhambre repeated the party’s demand that real-time availability of such beds be made public through a app dashboard or a ward war room seen in other states.
Pointing out that no other state in the country publishes such confidential medical details of covid victims, Mhambre accused the Health Minister of trying to blame the high death toll on the patients themselves.
Addressing the CM and Health Minister’s repeated claim that patients are dying because they don’t come to hospitals on time, Mhambre said that a major cause of delay in admission is due to shortage of beds in most Covid hospitals, and patients are not aware where to go to in case their health deteriorates. In such a situation, a portal or app dashboard with real-time availability of beds would help save precious lives.
Additionally, Mhambre said that the Govt should discuss this delay with the doctors involved in tele-consultation of positive patients under home isolation, and find out the reasons why such patients are not seeking hospitalisation faster.
Questioning the motivation behind revealing patients’ confidential details such as comorbidities, Mhambre reminded the Minister that in August last year where the covid death toll was less than 100, the Health Dept had shockingly claimed that “these patients with comorbidities would have died anyway”. Now that deaths have crossed more than 1100, is the Minister continuing to use the same excuse to hide its own failures in providing treatment facilities?
As warned by AAP earlier, the hunt for oxygen cylinders and concentrators in the open market has already begun. It was shocking to see the BJP’s own Central Govt cap Goa’s oxygen supply to 11 tons in covid times, when Goa’s purchase was 40 tons in normal, non-covid times.
Mhambre lamented that if the patients’ condition deteriorates, they are not able to get the next step of treatment from oxygen beds to ICU bed, or from ICU to ventilator. Mhambre demanded to know where are the 200 ventilators that the Govt had ordered through emergency procurement in June last year at a cost of 16.3 crores.
Mhambre said there is an urgent need to save precious Goan lives. Citing a large of distress calls that AAP volunteers are receiving with requests for bed, oxygen and ventilators, Mhambre urged the Health Minister and Chief Minister to focus on rapidly expanding this advanced treatment capacity, and to ensure real-time information of their availability.