PANAJI: The government’s brave statement on the floor of the house that did not occur due to lack of oxygen during the peak of the second covid wave had turned on anger and frustration between the families who died.
From resolved with guilt and struggling to sleep, those who were left behind were still struggling to make peace with their losses when they found a cold refusal of Minister of Health Vishwajit Rane in the legislative assembly.
W D’Souza, from a village in South Goa, said he saw many people breathing their last breath in the first two weeks hopefully when he tends to his mother at GMC.
“I have seen people dying because of the lack of oxygen.
It was very sad.
The doctors asked us to use stretchers and trolleys to bring as many as seven oxygen cylinders from the ground floor,” he told toi.
His mother died, even though the doctor told him he got better.
Guilt and anger flooded him in the waves, because he remembered the time he spent beside his mother’s bed at GMC.
He high at GMC coincides with the peak of the second wave, when at least 75 Covid deaths are reported on one day.
“I still can’t sleep at night.
It’s the worst day of my life,” said D’Souza after a long break.
“I keep remembering his memory, and it looks like this pain will last forever, and now, the government denies it.” He is not the only one.
“My uncle died because his family could not get the oxygen cylinder replacement on time.
Now the government said that no one died, I felt frustrated,” said Rajesh Kalangutkar from Ponda.
Kalangutkar said that his uncle’s loss, the only member of income in the family, remained like fresh wounds for a large family.
Resident Saligao Ashley Delaney remembers the patient and the doctor scrambles for oxygen.
“After about two weeks, the doctors had begun to give up.
I saw their helplessness when they said their requests fell in deaf ears.
You feel helpless too,” he said.
Delaney, whose father-in-law himself underwent treatment at GMC, spending his backup time there helping other patients with food and oxygen supplies.
As one of the many faceless volunteers during the second Covid-19 wave, he got a view without challenges in GMC, the most critical lack of oxygen.
From the beginning of May, the doctor at GMC repeatedly marked the lack of oxygen supply to the Directorate of Health Services, Scoop Oxygen – which had a monopoly on the supply of oxygen to the hospital – and even the office of the minister’s chairman.
SOS calls will usually start around 11pm, and will continue until 6am.
The flow of medical oxygen through the main pipe will get off on the ward 145, 142, 148 and 123, encourage doctors, relatives, and officers to look for oxygen cylinders in panic.
On May 11, Rane held a press conference to announce that 26 Covid-19 patients died between 2am and 6am at GMC during the second wave due to a decrease in oxygen supply.
He has called for a high court probe into the death and decrease in oxygen supply, and is also written to the head of the Minister of Pramod Sawant asking at least four oxygen tanks of 5,000 liters or 20,000 liter 20,000 liter oxygen tanks to be installed in the GMC.
On May 15, the 20,000-liter oxygen tank was installed.
“If there is no problem in oxygen supply, why does the government install a large capacity oxygen tank? And what is the need for a resident doctor to connect two to three patients to one oxygen cylinder?” Asked a senior doctor posted in GMC during the crisis.
The doctor said the state government was hiding behind technically while denying death due to lack of oxygen.
The doctor said the death certificate said the acute breathing pressure syndrome (ARDS), heart stop, acute pneumonia or Covid-19 as an official cause of death, without mentioning the asphyxia or arrest of breathing made.
“We have a call recording from the official GMC line where the doctor himself tells us that they run out of oxygen.
Does the GMC doctor lie on the official land of GMC?,” Asked Shruti Chaturvedi, who started the Covid Care Goa initiative.
“I remember my father who survived for two weeks extra because he got the oxygen cylinder from someone who had just expired.
It is clear that medical oxygen is not enough,” Delaney said.