All of the 16 ventilators brought in to launch the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at Faridpur Medical College Hospital (FMCH) five years ago, still to this day remain non-functional.
Unfortunately, there are not any more of these life-saving machines in any government or private hospital in the district, which are used to push oxygen into the lungs of critically-ill patients.
FMCH Director Md Saifur Rahman said, in preparation for the deadly coronavirus pandemic, they recently checked all the ventilators and found all of them to be inoperable.
Meanwhile, Faridpur General Hospital’s Residential Medical Officer Ganesh Kumar Agarwala said their 115-bed hospital does not have any ventilator either.
Faridpur Civil Surgeon Siddikur Rahman said they held a meeting at the deputy commissioner’s office on Monday afternoon and discussed the possibility of repairing the ventilators.
However, questions arose against the initiative to repair the ventilators amid an ongoing lawsuit filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) over the alleged corruption during purchase of equipment for the FMCH ICU.
Regarding that, Abdul Kalam Azad, former assistant director of Faridpur ACC, said: “If the hospital authorities, under the emergency circumstance, repair the inoperable ventilators for the greater interest of the nation, I don’t think it would jeopardize the ongoing case.”
