# Bengal

Ill-equipped isolation wards in medical colleges

But lack of preparedness exposed how most of the state-run teaching hospitals are yet install ventilators required for emergency treatment of nCoV patients with severe respiratory trouble in the isolation wards.

SNS | Kolkata | March 7, 2020 4:34 pm

Ill-equipped isolation wards in medical colleges

With rapid spread of novel coronavirus (nCoV) infections across the country, the state health department headed by the chief minister Miss Mamata Banerjee has directed all government medical colleges and hospitals to set up isolation wards each to provide treatments to patients showing symptoms of nCoV that has already claimed more than 3300 lives mostly in China, epicenter of the outbreak, and several other countries.

But lack of preparedness exposed how most of the state-run teaching hospitals are yet install ventilators required for emergency treatment of nCoV patients with severe respiratory trouble in the isolation wards. Patients affected with the viral disease are always vulnerable to develop breathing trouble.

Medical College Hospital (MCH), premier teaching hospital in the state, has already set up a 10-bed isolation ward in the MCH building accommodating five male and five female patients each without the mandatory life support system mainly ventilator.

“There is no arrangement for a ventilator in the isolation ward in our hospital so far. We will take measures if any emergency nCoV patient is brought to the hospital shifting him or her to the respiratory intensive care unit (RICU) equipped with ventilators,” said a senior administrator of MCH.