There was a deathly sound in the ward, of lungs struggling, and wheezing. Most of the patients were children, with a variety of winter respiratory diseases, including but not limited to Pneumonia.
Around each bed, loved ones stood guard. Fathers and sons, mothers and daughters. They looked on as their own fought for their lives. And to make things even more difficult, some of these loved ones, were bent over a machine, pumping precious air into the lungs of their children.
Dr. Mujeebur Rahman was one of them.
"My nephew had been brought in from Sahiwal, and as his condition went from bad to worse, there was no ventilator available for him."
"What we were given instead was an ambu bag which is generally used as a stop gap arrangement to save a patient’s life. Me and three other people took turns on this bag to make sure the child got his body’s requirement of air."
The lack and state of ventilators in public hospitals across the province is nothing new. According to a leading newspaper, a report recently filed by the Provincial government in the Supreme Court alleges that out of the 885 ventilators available across the province, at least 122 are dysfunctional.
That is nearly 14%. The same report claims that while many faults have been repaired locally, major defects cannot be resolved in the short term due to the unavailability of certain high tech parts which have to be imported from manufacturers and/or agents.