Denied Admission By 5 Hospitals, Bengaluru Man Sets Up COVID-19 Care Centre After Recovering
Finding a hospital bed is one of the toughest tasks these days, be it for COVID-19 treatment or other illnesses.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic hospitals are struggling to admit the patients seeking treatment every passing day.
This is particularly a challenge in the big cities, which also have the highest number of COVID-19 cases.
Due to this shortage, we have come across any number of stories in recent times where people were denied hospital admissions, which turned out to be fatal.
Bengaluru resident Sunjoy Gaarg too faced a similar situation last month after he tested positive for COVID-19 on June 28.
The 49-year-old iron and steel businessman, like many others in Bengaluru, struggled to find and hospital bed.
According to Bangalore Mirror, Gaarg was turned away by not one, but five hospitals, but eventually managed to get treatment due to a friends’ influence.
Based on his own experience, Gaarg decided to do something to help COVID-19 patients.
That is how he came up with the idea of setting up a COVID-19 Firstline Treatment Center for asymptomatic patients.
Even before he had tested positive for COVID-19, the Agrawal Samaj Karnataka, which Gaarg is the president, was involved in the distribution of ration and food kits during the lockdown.
While he was still in quarantine, Gaarg got other members of the organization on board and a 42-bed COVID care centre was set up in Meenakshi Meadows at Jigani Hobli.
According to the Agrawal Samaj, the COVID care centre was set up in a matter of 48 hours and has all facilities for the patients including food, beds, hot water, indoor games, Wi-Fi and medicines for patients.
The COVID care centre also tied up with a private hospital that agreed to provide two doctors and four nurses to look after the patients.
The community also aims to scale up the capacity of the centre in the coming days to 100 or even more if the need arises.
A member of the Agrawal Samaj told a local TV channel that initially they wanted to make the facility, free of cost for everyone, but was advised to charge a nominal amount.
Recently there was a similar story from Surat, where Kader Shaikh, a 63-year-old businessman who had tested COVID positive and recovered converted his office of 30,000 square feet into a?COVID-19?facility where the poor could get treatment.
The facility has 85 beds including 15 ICU beds and he signed an agreement with the Surat Municipal Corporation to provide medical staff and equipment at the facility in Surat’s Adajan area.?
