Delhi braves virus, but GTB director on Goa trip

New Delhi: With one death, Delhi is on the brink of facing a coronavirus outbreak, but for Sunil Kumar, the Director of Guru Teg Bahadur (GTB) hospital here, it was time to embark on a Goa tour.

According to a source, that the director of the GTB hospital, that holds out hope for lakhs of people of east and northeast Delhi, is on a Goa tour is symptomatic of what ails India’s public health system.

A source in the GTB hospital said that, at a time of global pandemic, Sunil Kumar should be giving full attention to the administration of the hospital and ensuring that GTB hospital is ready and alert to deal with any unforeseen situation, but instead he is on a Goa trip.

“The GTB hospital is hardly equipped to prevent a coronavirus-like pandemic. The hospital lacks even the basic facilities like sanitizers, masks, retrovirus drugs, and other such facilities. There is no mask available for the doctors and you will not find a single bottle of sanitizer in any of the bathrooms of the hospital. GTB hospital is suffering from a lack of infrastructure and the Delhi government is reluctant to pay any attention to it. Everything is just on paper; on the ground, GTB hospital is not even ready to fight a normal flu. The inefficiency of the hospital was revealed during the Delhi riots, as the hospital was not equipped to complete proper post-mortem and is yet to complete all the post-mortems,” a source at GTB hospital told The Sunday Guardian.

“Think about the situation of a hospital that claims of treating 300 riot victims out of whom 67 are gunshot wounds and the hospital does not have an MRI machine.

It’s bizarre and shocking as for medico-legal cases (MLC) cases, it is almost sacrosanct to have a proper diagnosis report. God knows how without an MRI test, GTB hospital has treated so many wounded patients, mostly having head injuries due to the stone-pelting during the riots,” the same source said.

However, Sunil Kumar, in his press statement, said that GTB hospital is ready to combat the outbreak of coronavirus and the hospital has created 18 isolation wards for infected patients. This reporter tried to get the hospital’s version on the issue, but the hospital PRO was not reachable.

The coronavirus pandemic saw the country record its second death from the infection on Friday in the capital.

The global total of cases has crossed 144,000, with Italy replacing China as the country with the most active cases.