On the night of April 17, Ram Kumar Jaiswal went to sleep relieved that his elder brother Raj Kumar was recovering. It had been a week sin...
On the night of April 17, Ram Kumar Jaiswal went to sleep relieved that his elder brother Raj Kumar was recovering.
It had been a week since Raj Kumar, 28, had been admitted to the government medical college and hospital at Shahdol in Madhya Pradesh after he had tested positive for Covid-19. With his oxygen levels falling, he had been moved to the intensive care unit. But that night, he seemed better, he even ate dinner by himself.
At 4 am, however, Ram Kumar, who was sleeping outside the ICU, woke up to commotion. He heard hospital workers say repeatedly, “Get the cylinder.”
He tried to enter the ICU but the guards did not let him. He pushed past them only to watch his brother’s body go cold. “Tadap raha tha.” He was struggling, said Ram Kumar.
He alleged he saw six others die in the ICU unit. “The oxygen supply was low, we all found out,” said Ram Kumar. “How else did seven people die in one go?”
The hospital authorities have refuted the allegation. The pressure of oxygen from the centralised system that stores 12 metric tonnes had dropped, said Dr Milind Shiralkar, dean of the college. But the hospital had 245 jumbo cylinders, he claimed....
