Kathmandu: Covid-19 patients across the country are struggling to get hospital beds, oxygen, and ventilator support, and crematoriums are overwhelmed by the devastating new surge of infections galloping throughout the country at an alarming rate.
The data made public by the government, however, does not portray the ground reality.
The Ministry of Health and Population (MoHP) on Friday said that there are 678 ICU beds and 335 ventilator beds available for Covid-19 patients across the country.
But experiences people are sharing on social media present a different and alarming scenario. Social media platforms are flooded with pleads for hospital beds including ICUs, ventilators, and oxygen as Covid-19 cases and deaths are setting new records every day. On Friday, the country reported 9,196 cases and 50 deaths, according to Health Ministry.
The horrible experiences people are sharing prove that the country has already run out of health resources. But the government is attempting to hide its incompetency presenting ‘false data’.
A Twitter user –@Sarojshree wrote, “There is a shortage of ICU and ventilator beds in Kavre. Hospital says to find an ICU bed elsewhere.”
The horrible experiences people are sharing prove that the country has already run out of health resources. But the government is attempting to hide its incompetency presenting ‘false data’.
There have also been reports of Covid-19 patients, even after being discharged, denying leaving ICU beds. In Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital, patients are refusing to leave ICU beds even though serious Covid-19 patients are in a huge number outside of the emergency, wrote Subhash Adhikari on Twitter.
According to Covid Connect Nepal, they got 157 inquiries for ICUs, ventilators, oxygen support, and vehicles on Wednesday. But the platform run by youths was able to solve only 52 inquiries, which means one-third did not get access to the health system.
The number Covid Connect Nepal made public was only of those who pleaded for help through social media. All these instances and data show the country’s health system has already collapsed, but the government has a different plan to hide the severity of the pandemic.
While the government has been claiming there are enough beds, a ward chairperson died in an ambulance while searching for an ICU bed on Thursday morning. Chair of Butwal Sub-metropolitan-7, Nabin Thapa Magar, 44, breathed his last while searching for ICU beds in Butwal, according to a media report.
A Twitter user @kumarshacharya wrote that his brother-in-law succumbed to Covid-19 due to lack of bed.
[In English: My brother-in-law died of Covid-19. We couldn’t arrange a bed in the hospital; his dead body is lying in the room. All the family members have been infected. CCMC will start the process after recommendation by the ward office. How will be the dead body managed? Where are the government authorities?]
Likewise, another Twitter user @kandeldai wrote about lack of beds despite visiting multiple hospitals.
[In English: My father is being taken to different hospitals in an ambulance but there are no beds available.]
According to health stakeholders, the government is well aware of the ground reality, but is hiding the severity.
Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic last year, the K P Sharma Oli-led government has omitted crucial information, and mobilized the entire mechanism to cover up the severity of the pandemic, they said.
Experts lament that bureaucrats and ministers, who supposedly have sought to inform and guide the public, have been involved in appeasing the Prime Minister and hiding the failure and the ministry’s top officials are hell-bent on following populism, appeasing the power and being guided by the profit orientation at the time of procurement.
For instance, the Health Ministry published a book named “Covid-19 Mahamari ra Hamra Prayas Haru” [Covid-19 Pandemic and Our Initiatives] last year to glorify the government’s ‘failed battle to combat the pandemic’. The book was published when the first wave of the pandemic was hitting the country hard.
Without implementing concrete plans to fight the pandemic, the government is presenting ‘false data’.
According to a senior official at the MoHP, even at the time of the pandemic, the ministry published the book unnecessarily. “The responsibility to publish the book was given to a close aide of the Prime Minister. If we go by the content of the book, everything was done one year earlier but the whole country is suffering now due to lack of essential health facility,” he said.
Although the country was struggling to combat the first wave, the Prime Minister was recommending unscientific and unproven remedies – consumption of Gurjo and turmeric powder — to fight against Covid-19. He kept on bragging about Nepalis immune system despite people succumbing to Covid-19.
Without implementing concrete plans to fight the pandemic, the government is presenting ‘false data’, slammed experts.
Though the government claims the availability of ventilator and ICU beds, people are dying without getting medical support. And, the number of cases is increasing every day, with a positivity rate hovering above 40 percent for the last ten days.
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