Patients in Delhi dying on trolleys while waiting for hospital admission

NEW DELHI • Straining against his weight, Mr Shayam Narayan's brothers haul him from a rickshaw onto a hospital trolley in India's capital New Delhi.

Only a few minutes pass before they are given the news: He is already dead.

Mr Narayan is one of the latest casualties of a second wave of the coronavirus sweeping across India. His brothers had first brought him to the hospital at 6am last Friday. But they said staff deemed him well enough to return home. Ten hours later, his condition deteriorating, they came back. But it was too late.

"The system is broken," his younger brother Raj said.

Mr Narayan, who had five children, died without being admitted to the hospital, or taken to its morgue, meaning his death is unlikely to be officially counted in the city's rising toll.

Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, in the north-east of India's capital, is one of many battling oxygen shortages and a lack of space. Patients die on trolleys outside, like Mr Narayan.

The medical superintendent of the hospital was not immediately available for comment. A Delhi government spokesman said: "In GTB Hospital, the patients are arriving via ambulances despite unavailability of beds. Despite this, the government is trying its best to give all patients treatment at some facility or the other."

That does not stop patients gasping for air arriving every few minutes in ambulances and auto rickshaws. Half a dozen wait for hours on trolleys for admission. Others, like Mr Narayan, die before ever being admitted.

"The staff are doing their best but there is not enough oxygen," said Mr Tushar Maurya, whose mother is being treated at the hospital.

After being denied entry to the intensive care unit (ICU), a man staggers as he tries to get back into an auto rickshaw.

Minutes later, he returns unconscious. Loaded onto a stretcher, his arm slams against the ICU door while a guard watches on.

Another man writhes in pain in the back of an ambulance, alone, as it drives forward with the rear doors hanging open.

Footage from inside the wards seen by Reuters showed some patients sitting two to a bed and barely enough floor space for others to stand. "They are like cattle in there," said one man after coming outside.

REUTERS