Technician away, ward boy was clueless as oxygen failed

The three deaths at the Jalandhar Civil Hospital on July 27 took place because one technician in charge of the oxygen manifold system was on leave, a second technician had finished his morning shift and a ward boy, who was filling in for the second technician, was not an expert and did not know how to properly handle the system.

Moreover, the trauma centre’s two oxygen manifold systems had jumbo oxygen cylinders attached, but these were not in the automatic mode. The regulator knobs of the oxygen cylinders attached to both systems were shut and the ward boy, who had been left in charge by the technicians, was not able to work them properly. This is believed to have led to the technical snag at 6.35 pm on the fateful day.

While one manifold system is installed right near the entrance of the trauma centre, the other has been put up at the back of the same wall where scores of oxygen cylinders have been stored for replacement purpose. There are at least four more such systems in various wards of the hospital but all of these are manual with no training to attendants on quickly switching over to these as an alternative. In fact, no oxygen cylinders were seen attached in one section of the mother and child care centre of the hospital.

A doctor said, “We have not used the oxygen manifold system since the time we got two oxygen plants during the Covid time. A few of these systems could have been lying defunct. However, the supply from the plants was sufficient.”

Instead of a technician, a ward boy was handling the oxygen plant when the supply got disrupted at the hospital on Sunday evening, claiming the lives of three critical patients.

The hospital authorities had just two technicians to handle the oxygen plant. While one of them was on leave, the other had left after his morning shift. The authorities had officially assigned the duty to handle the plant to ward boys Deepak and Kamal.

When a compressor of the 1,000 litre per minute (LPM) plant developed a snag on the fateful evening, Deepak was tasked with manually shifting the supply to the second compressor. He tried to fix it but crucial time was lost.

Hospital employees said originally there were four technicians, who had been appointed on the “DC rate”. Two had quit about six months ago. Since the remaining two could not manage the system, the authorities had decided to rope in the two Class IV employees to make up for the shortage of technicians.

Another lapse that has surfaced is that the stabiliser at the hospital’s pressure swing adsorption (PSA) plant is out of order for the past month and a half. The stabiliser is supposed to regulate electricity and any fault in it can cause damage to the motor which powers the compressor. A trail of green oil went down the defunct compressor on Monday.

By Tuesday afternoon, the compressor was repaired. The hospital has a second PSA plant too of 700 LPM capacity. It also has 150 cylinders available at all times for oxygen supply.

Dr Surjit Singh, SMO, Oxygen Plant Management, Civil Hospital, said, “One of the compressors at the 1,000 LPM plant had been out of order and has now been repaired. The stabiliser has also been non-functional for some time. The manifold system was working but a cylinder may have got emptied.”

The MS, Civil Hospital, Dr Raj Kumar, said, “Due to a leak in the compressor pipe, a Class IV worker had to shift the system manually to a cylinder. That is all I know of the issue at present.”

The Director, PHSC, Dr Anil Goyal, had on Monday sought all records regarding the PSA plants.