Pune: Are you a COVID-19 patient? Do you require a bed in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU)? Do you have a strong backing or a letter from an influential person? If yes, then only you will be admitted to get ICU bed!
A shocking revelation has come front from a survey where 32 per cent people in Pune have used their ‘so-called connections’ to get the ICU beds.
This shocking buzz has come to the fore in a survey conducted by Local Circles. People from 211 cities across the nation took part in the survey. The survey was conducted by 17,000 citizens who have experienced a COVID-19 in the hospital's intensive care unit (ICU) for those who have COVID-19 in family or relatives. These include over 2,500 citizens from Maharashtra.
An online survey conducted revealed that over 32 per cent of the respondents in Pune stated that they used some ‘connections’ to receive COVID-19 ICU bed. The Indian Express quoted Sachin Taparia, founder of LocalCircles as saying that there were 1,157 responses from Pune. For the question on experience with getting ICU beds for coronavirus patients, they got 653 responses where at least 32 per cent people had to use some strings to get a bed. Only 5 per cent patients got it through the routine process.
SHORTAGE OF MANPOWER
With cases rising in the Pune, the district administration acknowledged that trained manpower is a key challenge before government and private hospitals to address the situation here.
Pune Divisional Commissioner Saurabh Rao and Pune Municipal Commissioner Vikram Kumar in a press conference on Tuesday stated that essential measures are being taken to recruit more medical staff.
“With health structure, the major challenge is trained manpower shortage and to address this issue, the administration has been holding meetings with various organisations,” Vikram Kumar informed.
The private hospitals are prepared to surge the count of beds but these hospitals are having the issue of medical staff that is fully trained. Vikram Kumar said, “A meeting was held with the organisation of doctors and we expect that doctors and the medical staff will join to help soon.”
