Ventilators Left To Rot: The System Is Responsible
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2021-05-06 13:42:57
About the Author
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
View all posts by this Author
A report, tucked away in the inside pages of national dailies, said that in what could amount to criminal negligence, thousands of ventilators ordered when the first wave was at its peak, have not been unboxed yet and are lying unused in remote districts in warehouses in rural areas across India. These ventilators are part of the 60000 pieces ordered by the Centre under the PM Cares Fund to ramp up health infrastructure in the wake of the pandemic. But industry body Ficci has recently written to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) pointing out that a majority of these are lying unused at government facilities either due to shortage of intensivists or due to lack of oxygen supply and consumables.
This is shocking. As the country grapples with a ferocious second wave in which lakhs are getting infected daily and thousands are dying, thousands of life saving ventilators are lying unused across the country only because no one keeps tabs and has the good sense of deploying them in areas where they are needed and can be put to use to save lives.
Apart from insensitive politicians and prickly bureaucrats, coupled with a plethora of laws, rules and regulations, India suffers from the fact that there is no follow up or action taken report is neither demanded nor submitted. If it was mandatory for districts to immediately acknowledge the receipt of those ventilators and report how they were put to use within 15 days of receiving them, and if someone in the NDMA was mandated to keep tabs, this situation would not have occurred. Experts have said that some of the unused ventilators might have become defective and unusable or some might even be untraceable. This is gross wastage and criminal negligence in these tough times. The government must order an inquiry and ensure that such things do not happen again by putting in place a system of submitting action taken or use of equipment report within 15 days of supplying the materials. If there is a action taken report that says that the machine cannot be used for whatever reason, there must be a system to redeploy the same where it can be put to use instead of letting it rot at the original destination.
Pic: A representative image from The Telegraph, not the instant unboxed ventilators
