At Hyderabad's Gandhi Hospital, mortuary is full, bodies kept on 4th floor

HYDERABAD: Gandhi Hospital, recast for the second time as a Covid-19-only facility, has run out of beds. Other than for emergency treatment, the hospital has stopped admitting patients. All other cases are being advised home quarantine.

Some staff nurses who spoke to Deccan Chronicle on Monday said the conditions are no longer normal in the hospital.

The hospital mortuary is full with bodies and the ‘spillover bodies’ – around 20 as on Sunday evening – were kept on the fourth floor of the building in an In-Patient ward.

“On Monday, after 10.30am, those bodies were shifted for disposal,” a staff nurse said.
“Compared to last year, we are seeing cases that are more severe, and most of those coming in require oxygen. The fatality rate is also more,” the nurse said.

Many of the nursing staff are in a dilemma wither to continue with the job or leave, out of a concern for their safety. Even the government has failed to deliver any of its promises made to the frontline warriors like nurses last year. The government looked the other way after the cases went down.

After a recruitment drive, the number of nurses at the hospital had risen to 600, but may are getting infected by the Covid-19 virus. In the last 10 days, 15 nurses caught Covid-19 and are now admitted in Gandhi itself, a nurse revealed.

The nurses the DC spoke with also complained of the low quality of PPE kits. “What we are being provided with now are made from plastic. These kits are very suffocating than the ones they gave us in the past. There is also a shortage of face masks,” according to one nurse.

They also said they were not being paid risk allowances, extra leaves, and food. Even the 15 days’ quarantine period after 15 days of work is no longer in force and this is exposing them to more risk of catching the disease, the nurses said.