Glimpses of possibilities

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.