Kalaburagi/ Bengaluru, 24 March

Just a day after Medical Education Minister Sharanprakash Patil visited Gulbarga Institute of Medical Sciences (GIMS), the hospital experienced a power cut that impacted patients on ventilators. The minister was at GIMS on Saturday to inspect the progress of the super-speciality hospital.

In ICU ward 429 on the 4th floor, the ventilators for beds 1 and 2 stopped working. This affected a woman from Chittapur taluk, who was admitted for respiratory issues; and a male cancer patient from Sedam taluk, according to a relative of one of the patients. The condition of post-surgical patients in the critical care unit also became serious.

As the patients struggled to breathe, nurses provided oxygen through a Bain circuit until the power was restored. Videos of relatives confronting nurses over the ventilator failure have been circulating online. The families have asked the authorities to file a complaint and take corrective measures.

Despite the video showing the seriousness of the outage, Patil said, “Due to the increased number of beds in the hospital, power demand also increased, leading to the outage. However, no harm was caused to the patients.”

GIMS Medical Superintendent Dr Shivakumar told Salar News, “There was a power outage for about an hour, but it did not cause any problems to the patients. Yes, ventilator disruptions took place, but we got it sorted out.” He also confirmed that hospital staffers were manually pumping oxygen for patients, including those undergoing post-surgery recovery and receiving treatment for respiratory and cancer-related ailments.

Since Jayadeva Hospital, which was located in the GIMS building, has been relocated, GIMS is now using those floors. However, as Jayadeva authorities removed their transformer while vacating, it has caused power supply issues. To resolve this, a new transformer is being installed, and an engineer has been assigned to GIMS, the minister said.

He added that more people are now coming to GIMS due to quality treatment. However, some private hospitals are attempting to tarnish GIMS’ reputation and misleading videos are being circulated, he said. The minister urged the public to be aware of such false propaganda.