By Express News Service HYDERABAD: After a half-decade wait, the Government Chest Hospital has finally been provided with ventilators that were crucial to treating patients with respiratory ailments. However, most of the top hospitals in the city are either struggling with a lack of equipment for life-support systems or a lack of staff to handle the equipment that are just gathering dust. If a pattern is to be established, every hospital requires a minimum of two years before the TSMIDC approves, allots and installs the medical equipment required. The Chest Hospital, for close to five years, functioned without a single ventilator in its Respiratory Intensive Care Unit (RICU). The central oxygen system was used to compensate for the lack of ventilators. “After a long wait, we have finally been provided with ventilators. We haven’t received all of them, but eight of them have been allotted. We are yet to get another six,” said Dr Mahboob Khan, superintendent of Govt Chest Hospital. Junior doctors and senior residents have been demanding ventilators and monitors for specific ICUs and general ward like Gandhi and Osmania General Hospital. “Gandhi Hospital’s neurosurgery department requires 16 ventilators and currently has only two. In a requirement for more, the ventilators have to be transported from the general ICU in case of an emergency to the neurosurgery ward,” said a junior doctor, on condition of anonymity. Responding to the allegations, Dr Prakash Rao, principal of Osmania Medical College said, “Though situation is not ideal, we never let the patients suffer and transport the ventilators from another dept that is not currently using them. ”

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