![]() ![]() India’s failures parallel those in other countries both rich and poor. A recent antibody study suggested more than half of India’s people have contracted Covid-19. The actual number of deaths may be as high as 3 million to 5 million. The toll has been enormous: The more than 430,000 official deaths from Covid-19 are believed to be a serious undercount. Colleagues pay tribute to a friend who died of Covid-19 complications in Assam, India, on May 29. The system was so overloaded that some patients died before finding out the results of their Covid-19 test. Overworked community health volunteers were stretched beyond their limits. Indian experts say this reality reflects the government’s failure to invest in a sustainable health system for the world’s largest democracy.Īs a result, when Covid-19 hit, there were not enough hospitals, particularly in the rural parts of the country. Indians pay a higher share of the country’s health care expenditures out of their own pockets. The country’s health outcomes, such as life expectancy and infant mortality, trail accordingly. The country spends a smaller share of its GDP on health care than most of its economic peers. Less than 40 percent of Indians have health coverage. Long before an unprecedented wave of infections and death began this spring, there were warning signs that India’s chronically underfunded health system would struggle against the deadly new virus. ![]() But if patients die because there is no oxygen, that is wrong,” said Gupta, a former local legislator who in the past ran with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the current ruling party. Across the country, patients were dying because hospitals ran out of oxygen. ![]() Gupta was witnessing firsthand the collapse of India’s health system, buckling under the pressure of a pandemic. I have never felt this helpless in my life.”Īn oxygen tanker leaves after replenishing supplies at Batra Hospital on May 1. But here we had people who were alive, who we were treating, and they were dying. “In the aftermath of an earthquake, we would deal with injured or dead people. Gupta called it the worst day of his life. And in that brief lapse, 12 people died.Ī friend and colleague of 30 years, a senior gastroenterologist, was among the dead. For about 10 minutes, there was no air for patients struggling to breathe. The oxygen in Gupta’s hospital was exhausted before reinforcements arrived. Nurses tried to reassure panicking patients and their loved ones, who had learned from social media reports that the hospital was running out of air.įinally, government officials gave Gupta some news: More oxygen was coming, but not for at least 90 more minutes. The local government had taken over the oxygen supply during the emergency, and Gupta pleaded with officials for more. Oxygen use was up to four times higher than normal, and the hospital’s reserves were dwindling. At Gupta’s 500-bed private hospital, 80 percent of beds were reserved for Covid patients. The massive second wave of Covid-19 cases in India, driven by the emerging delta variant, was peaking. None of it prepared him for the day his hospital ran out of oxygen. NEW DELHI, India - Shiv Charan Lal Gupta, the medical director of Batra Hospital in New Delhi, has seen the devastation that follows an earthquake: dead bodies strewn about, patients maimed and in desperate need of care.
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