A two-judge bench of the Delhi High Court has become the last hope for many hospitals struggling to get oxygen for COVID-19 patients as government officials bicker over who is responsible, reports Reuters.
The court has been holding almost daily video conferences to hear petitions from hospitals invoking India’s constitutional right to protection of life. Local and federal officials are attending and the court’s intervention has saved lives, lawyers say.
On Sunday, with just 30 minutes of oxygen left for 42 virus patients at Sitaram Bhartia Hospital, and new supplies nowhere in sight, hospital authorities approached the Delhi court as a “last resort” for help, lawyer Shyel Trehan said. The judges ordered the Delhi state government to immediately arrange supplies.
“Oxygen cylinders arrived soon after the hearing, and a tank arrived a few hours later,” Trehan said.
The shortage of medical oxygen has plagued the city of 20m people for about two weeks, with unprecedented scenes of patients dying on hospital beds, in ambulances and in carparks outside, gasping for air. Delhi is recording about 20,000 new COVID-19 cases a day. As the health system buckles, the city says it needs 976 tonnes of medical oxygen daily, but gets less than 490 tonnes, allocated by the federal government.
Representatives of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, which is managing supplies nationally, have told the court they were doing all that is possible, and blamed the Delhi government, run by a rival party, for politicising the issue.
Over the weekend, when Delhi state representatives again flagged concerns that oxygen supplies were not arriving in time, putting patients’ lives at risk, Justice Vipin Sanghi lashed out at officials, saying the “Water has gone over the head. Enough is enough…enough is enough.”
In late April, Sanghi pulled up government officials, saying they should “beg, borrow, steal or import” oxygen supplies to meet the city’s needs. He said the state “cannot say ‘We can provide only this much and no more,’ so if people die, let them die”.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-delhi-court/last-resort-desperate-for-oxygen-indian-hospitals-go-to-court-idUSKBN2CL0ZK