Hyderabad: MLAs pitch in to aid medical facilities

Hyderabad: Some of the MLAs in the city and elsewhere in the State have to pitch in as the supplying of oxygen to the Covid designated hospitals turned into a messy affair.

In some other places, the peoples' representatives have been picking up arguments with the doctors and health staff who are already under stress with the increasing number of Covid cases, as well as angry people giving earful for turning them away without conducting COVID tests and administrating vaccine.

In one of such cases, Uppal MLA Bethi Subhash Reddy was forced to pitch in to do the balancing act. The MLAs action had come following complaints from the people that the local hospitals are denying admissions citing lack of oxygen.

After few complaints from the people and at a time when people are dying, "I had to intervene to know the on goings and also the reason for hospitals denying admissions at a time people's lives are at stake," said Subhash Reddy.

The first thing which had come to our notice was that the hospitals have beds with ventilator facilities. But, they told me they could not take patients due to the lack of oxygen supply. "My constituency has about five oxygen producing industries. And, it was shocking to know that the hospitals located in the vicinity were not getting the oxygen," he added.

The problem was that the industries were supplying oxygen to the distributors. In turn, the distributors were selling it wherever they wanted without even bothering about supplying it to the hospitals in the area.

Subhash Reddy said that Uppal is the entry point for the people coming from Aleru, Bhongiri, Warangal, as well as those from Yadadri districts. Naturally, they come to take admission in the hospitals at Uppal in emergency cases. If the hospitals are deprived of oxygen supply, then the beds with ventilators will serve no purpose and remain unutilised.

It was against this backdrop that I had called the representatives of the industry and the hospitals for a meeting. Both have agreed on the issue and the need for the hospitals to get oxygen supplies to save lives, he added.

The MLA said that all that he had asked was to provide sufficient oxygen supply so that the hospitals can use the beds with ventilators to help people coming to take admission. "Now, each industry has adopted one or two hospitals to directly supply oxygen and resolved the issue," he said.

he Uppal MLA said the number of cases in his areas has been coming down registering only 15 to 20 cases and hopes that it would soon be zero.