BMCRI dangerously short of manpower after faculty, students test positive

With 63 faculty members and students at the Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute (BMCRI) testing positive for Covid-19, the institute is rapidly going short of crucial manpower.

Out of 256 faculty members posted for Covid duties, 38 are infected with coronavirus. This apart, 25 postgraduate students manning 750 beds in various blocks and centres at Victoria Hospital are also infected.

The serious depletion in the workforce has hamstrung the institute from fully utilising the 130 beds at the Charaka Hospital, which currently has just 74 patients.

“The paucity of medicine and anaesthesia staff at BMCRI meant only 50 beds have been reflected in the central hospital bed management system of the BBMP,” said Dr Manoj Kumar, dean, Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital, who is in charge of running Charaka.

He added: “The 28 ICU beds at Charaka are also not used since the hospital awaits 45 senior residents from BMCRI.”

CORONAVIRUS SPECIAL COVERAGE ONLY ON DH

Between 310 and 350 students of BMCRI have tested positive since the beginning of the pandemic.

“And 60 have tested positive in the second wave and active infections are 25,” said Dr Dayanand Sagar, a final year MD student and president, Karnataka Association of Resident Doctors (KARD).

Appeal to BBMP

On April 23, KARD wrote to the BBMP Chief Commissioner requesting hotel isolation or other quarantine facilities for medics on Covid duty.

“The second wave being very severe, approximately eight to ten doctors are testing positive per week,” KARD’s letter read. “We are afraid of running out of manpower. We are neither provided post-duty quarantine facilities nor isolation facilities when we test positive.”

Sagar said at least five students, including suspected patients and those in quarantine awaiting their reports, use the same bathroom in the hostels they reside in.

Faculty members who infected their families, including their in-laws, said the government is fixated on beds to accommodate patients and not factoring in the number of doctors needed to attend the patients.

While the PMSSY Hospital was used as a quarantine centre for doctors last year, it now houses non-Covid patients who will soon be discharged and the beds will be turned over to Covid patients. “We have infected our families, including our in-laws,” a faculty member said.

BMCRI’s dean Dr CR Jayanthi said the institute is managing, without revealing details of how.

‘Don’t have facilities to bath after doffing PPE’

To make matters worse, six pathologists and lab technicians at BMCRI have also tested positive, overwhelmed by the heavy load of tests they did.

“We don’t even have facilities to bath after doffing our personal protective equipment (PPE), which is the basic thing one should do after spending four hours in the Covid ward,” said a faculty member on condition of anonymity.

“We (instead) remove the PPEs and directly go home to our families.”