MHA Inspection Reveals Blatant Violation Of COVID-19 Norms In Delhi Private Hospitals

When a team constituted by the Union Home Minister inspected private hospitals and nursing homes in the national capital, to check whether they were following mandatory COVID-19 protocols, it was found that there were grave violations in some cases.

The patients who were admitted with the infection were not being treated in accordance with the Centre¡¯s medical guidelines. The team found that these hospitals were administering their own therapies and were only partly complying with the laid down protocols, forcing the authorities to press stricter regulations and tighter monitoring of such facilities.

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Probe team findings

"In the discharge policy prescribed by MoHFW, only severe categories of admitted cases are required to be tested using RT¨CPCR technique prior to discharge. However, it was noted that all private hospitals inspected were testing every admitted COVID-19 patient using RT¨C PCR technique prior to discharge," the Hindustan Times quoted the report as saying.

As per the Director General of Health Services (DGHS) guidelines, apart from severe cases, patients who have moderate or mild COVID-19 symptoms can be discharged if they do not have fever for three consecutive days, without the requirement of an RT-PCR test.

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According to the probe, conducted during the third wave of the outbreak in November, 114 private health centres in Delhi were inspected on November 17-18, and the findings of the report have now been presented to the Supreme Court via DGHS of the Union Health Ministry

The Centre formed 10 teams

The Centre, in mid of November, had constituted 10 multi-disciplinary teams for visiting private hospitals treating COVID-19 patients, in the national capital. The aim was to check compliance with various directions issued by the MHA and the Delhi government to contain the spread of the virus. According to a MHA order on November 16, the teams started their visits immediately and submitted their reports within two days.

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What were the teams checking?

The multi-disciplinary teams, in a designated list of tasks, had to report to MHA?if the private hospitals had wards and ICU?beds in accordance with orders issued by the Delhi government, and whether the same is displayed on Corona dashboard of Delhi government on a real-time basis.

AFP

The teams were also to scrutinize whether these private hospitals are following the COVID-19 discharge policy as directed by the Centre. In the drill, the teams would also spotlight the RT-PCR testing mechanism to check the testing capacity available, along with the turnaround time of the test report.

In terms of patient care, the teams were to check if the critical patients are being referred to other government or private hospitals without ascertaining the availability in those hospitals.

The tally of active cases on Saturday dropped to 26,678 from 28,252 the previous day. The bulletin said the total number of cases has climbed to 5,89,544.