Yesterday, Titus called me to say that they ran out of ventilators for patients.
There were 4 patients who needed a ventilator at the same time. And with the the nearest ventilator 80 miles away, there was no other choice than to manually ventilate using a bag.
Patient A, a 25 year old lady who came with unknown poisoning. She came with seizures and later had a respiratory arrest. She was on the ventilator for almost a day before she was weaned out.
Patient B, a 17 year old young man with organophosphorus poisoning. He was gasping when he came in. He obviously took the second ventilator.
Patient C, a 48 year old man who came in with a krait bite. In spite of being started on a high dose ASV, he went into respiratory arrest. When Mr. C came in, B and C were already in the ventilator. Mr. C was manually bagged for around 12 hours, when we felt that Patient A could be weaned out.
Patient D, a 9 year old girl who came in gasping after a krait bite. She was intubated immediately and was bagged till Mr. B was out of the ventilator.
Then, there was a patient E, a 12 year old girl who was rushed in from the local village after a krait bite. We gave her an option to go to a higher centre. They have rushed her to Ranchi.
We did not have a bag to ventilate her if she had a respiratory arrest. Even, we were not sure of starting ASV as we did not have a bag to ventilate (2 patients were being manually ventilated) if she had an anaphylaxis.
Such a situation puts us in a position where we need to seriously ask questions about expanding our resources - - both in terms of infrastructure and qualified personnel.
To start off things, we eagerly wait for Dr. Roshine, the medicine consultant who'll join us on the 22nd, the coming Saturday.
OMG! This is so difficult, you sure need both resources and manpower.
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