An appalling development has come to light from Congress-ruled Rajasthan, where life-support ventilators belonging to the PM Cares Fund pool are being leased out by government hospitals to private institutes for exorbitant rates – the burden of which unsuspecting patients are having to incur. According to a report by Republic World, Bharatpur’s Rai Bahadur hospital has leased 20 of its ventilators provided by PM-CARES Fund to Jindal private hospital, citing ‘non-usage’ of the equipment. The development has exposed the Ashok Gehlot-led government of Rajasthan, as it allows the leasing of ventilators belonging to the central pool to private hospitals in the state.
Aggrieved kin quoted by Republic said, “40 ventilators were provided by the PM-CARES fund. I have been asking hospital administration for past 2 months, where have the ventilators been installed? But they have no answers. Jindal hospital which has always been in controversy, has been given 10 ventilators by hospital administration. Collector says that the ventilators were faulty, but they were not. Jindal hospital has been charging Rs 35,000-40,000 for these ventilators.”
Meanwhile, Rai Bahadur Hospital’s administrator shamelessly went on to defend the institute’s move to lease ventilators to Jindal Hospital. He said, “20 ventilators have been kept at non-COVID ICU wards, while 20 have been kept for COVID ICU wards. As per our oxygen point availability and caseload, we were not able to utilise 20 ventilators. Hence, we took a conscious decision to give it to a private hospital on cost.”
The Rajasthan government has been found to be complicit in the leasing out of ventilators to Jindal hospital, as state transport minister Pratap Singh Khachariyawas, while defending this decision of the local bodies, said, “In Bharatpur, they have rented the ventilators. They have rented them not given them for free. They had extra ventilators which they rented as private hospitals are also treating the patients of COVID-19.”
As reported by TFI earlier, 1,500 ventilators have been received by the government of Rajasthan in the past 10 months. These ventilators lie unopened and unused in Rajasthan, and 230 of them have now found to be faulty. Despite the rise in Covid-19 cases in Rajasthan, Ashok Gehlot’s government, for reasons best known to it, has decided not to make use of the ventilators being kept by it in storage.
राजस्थान में PM CARES Fund से आये वेंटीलेटर या तो डिब्बों में बंद पड़े हैं या निजी अस्पतालों में पहुँच गए हैं – जहाँ उनके इस्तेमाल के लिए आपको लाखों रुपये चुकाने होंगे।
क्या सरकारी वेंटिलेटर निजी अस्पताल को किराये पर देना सही है?
और अगर नहीं तो जगाइए राजस्थान सरकार को! pic.twitter.com/nS0vFjF0T3— Col Rajyavardhan Rathore (Modi Ka Parivar) (@Ra_THORe) May 9, 2021
Meanwhile, attacking the Congress government of the state for the ventilator fiasco, BJP MP Rajyavardhan Rathore demanded an inquiry into the incident saying, “PM Cares has provided for ventilators in every district in Rajasthan. But in Bharatpur, instead of using those 10 ventilators in the Rai Bahadur govt Hospital, the govt has rented these ventilators to a private hospital for Rs 2000/day. That ventilator which would have saved a poor person’s life for free now costs Rs 50,000.” He also alleged that in Jaipur, patients are being asked to pay Rs 1 lakh for an ICU bed.