Report into death of COVID-19 patients at Peshawar hospital released

PESHAWAR: A report into the death of six COVID-19 patients at Khyber Teaching Hospital, Peshawar, has been released, highlighting the procedural lapses that led to the shortage of oxygen supplies in the health facility, ARY NEWS reported.

It is pertinent to mention here that at least six Covid-19 patients died allegedly due to a shortage of oxygen at Peshawar’s Khyber Teaching Hospital.

The spokesman for the hospital soon after the incident said that the health facility gets its oxygen supply from Rawalpindi which did not reach on time, as a result of which the critically ill patients died.

According to the report detailing the lapses which led to the unfortunate incident, the issue of shortage of oxygen supplies was first highlighted when a call from the operation theatre (OT) section of the hospital conveyed the matter at 12:40 am on December 05.

“An employee named Waheed was appointed at the desk, however, no one received the call,” it said adding that even no staffer was present at the oxygen room.

A supervisor of the oxygen plant informed the OT officials that the oxygen tanks have run out of supplies. “He, however, said that 100 oxygen cylinders provided by the DG health were present,” the report read adding that some of the patients were shifted by the relatives to another health facility.

It further said that the vehicle responsible for supplying oxygen to the Khyber Teaching Hospital reached the health facility at 3:15 am on November 05.

Furthermore, sources privy to the matter said that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Minister for Health Taimur Jhagra has chaired a meeting of the board of governors of the hospital to review the situation after the incident.

The meeting was briefed that five deaths were reported in the COVID-19 ward while one patient died in the medical ICU. “All of the COVID-19 patients were on ventilators,” they said adding that other patients on ventilators were provided oxygen from a backup facility.