Ventilators provided under the PM Cares Fund Develop Snags at Punjab Hospitals

Chandigarh: A number of ventilators provided to Punjab under the PM Cares Fund last year have not been in use after they developed snags within a couple of hours of installation.

Sources said that 71 out of 80 ventilators supplied to Guru Gobind Singh Medical College and Hospital in Faridkot have reportedly been found faulty. These ventilators were provided to Punjab under the PM-Cares Fund.

Medical college doctors have said that these ventilators are non-functional and conked off within 1-2 hours of use. Anaesthetists have said that these ventilators sent by the Centre cannot be trusted as the machines abruptly stopped working while in use.

Dr Raj Bahadur, Vice-Chancellor of Baba Farid University of Health Sciences, Faridkot, said that the quality of the ventilators is significantly inferior. These machines are constantly hit by snags. So they cannot use these for patients until they have a trusted repair mechanism in place.

Kultar Singh Sandhwan, Kotkapura MLA, Punjab, tweeted, "These r the ventilators fm #PMCaresFund lying unused in GGSMC Faridkot. @CMOPb pls make them work for the needy #COVID19 patients....I shall be Obliged..and Appreciate."

As per the sources, medical college authorities said that the Faridkot medical college had 39 ventilators out of which 32 were functional. The non-availability of an adequate number of ventilators put the authorities in a tough spot with over 300 COVID patients admitted to the hospital.

Meanwhile, Punjab Chief Secretary Vini Mahajan has approved the hiring of engineers and technicians to repair the faulty ventilators. The technicians were expected to reach Faridkot today (May 12). The Punjab government has assured the medical college authorities that 10 new ventilators will be provided to the hospital on a priority basis.

The Government of India had sent 250 ventilators last year, which were priced over Rs. 25 crore. While some of these machines were lying packed at the State Health Department stores, some machines reported snags when put to use. Punjab lacks adequate trained manpower to operate the ventilators as 120 posts of anaesthetists are still lying vacant.

Punjab Health Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu has himself said that only 25% of the available ventilators have been in use.

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