Saahil Suhail
Early Times Report
Anantnag, Apr 19: How prepared we are to face the second wave of COVID-19 can be gauged from the fact that South Kashmir has roughly two ICU beds per 1 lakh population.
The details and figures available with Early Times also reveal that the southern region of Kashmir is most undeveloped in terms of health care infrastructure.
The Government Medical College Anantnag has just six (6) ICU beds and Trauma Hospital Bijbehara has 7 ICU beds. Currently, the Medical College caters to the whole of South Kashmir having a population of over twenty two (22) lakh.
Similarly, the neighboring district Kulgam, having a population of over 4.24 lakhs, has 10 ICU beds reserved for COVID-19 patients.
In Pulwama, the district hospital has 10 ICU beds while as Shopian district has only 4 beds. The total population of both the districts is around 8.20 lakhs.
The officials at Government Medical College Anantnag told Early Times that however, they don’t have enough manpower to run these ICU beds permanently.
“We can incubate critical COVID-19 positive patients and shift them to Srinagar for treatment,” Medical Superintend GMC Anantnag said.
He said that the hospital has 31 ventilators including 6 high end ventilators. “No one is currently occupied,” he added.
Dr Iqbal claimed that all the newly established hospital, including GMC Anantnag has been declared level-2 hospital.
“The high flow Oxygen is available and recently we have installed 100 liters oxygen plant in the hospital as well,” he said.
On Monday, a total 128 including 9 travelers tested positive for COVID-19 in South Kashmir. The region has 1037 active positive cases while it has seen 292 deaths due COVID-19 since last year. |
