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EVERYDAY CHALLENGES

Working in the hospital that is 100 years old is a pride in itself. But some of the buildings were not equipped
to take up the increasing patient load using HFNC and NIV’s and the standard of care had to be upgraded
which was a herculean effort. There was influx of 40 patients on the night of May 12, 2020. TECC was
full and the Master plan building had to be opened up and new staff had to be sent in. The same situation

prevailed on July 16 when the TECC and MPB were full and we had to open the C block for the new
patients. All this is easier said than done, took lot of time, calls and effort to manage the show.

The equipment provided by the government had to be installed and matching the energy specifications was

a huge load on the existing system. Identifying the problems with electrification, plumbing, lift operations
in our 100 year old buildings was a task by itself.

Everyone was fretting about contracting the infection and had concerns about the quality of PPE provided

to them. All went well for the first three months and it was very satisfying to see every batch coming out
of post duty quarantine with negative reports. But we faced our first setback and shock when our Health
care worker tested positive. First the nursing staff and then the doctors, the vehicle drivers et al contracted
the virus putting our system into deep strain.

Arranging transport, bed for treatment of our positive tested warriors and counselling them was a special
challenge. Only a few hotels agreed to house our Asymptomatic Covid positive Health care workers.
BMCRI will be ever grateful to BBMP and other organizations that lent support during the crisis. I would

like to mention the director of MINTO hospital who never said NO anytime we asked for help be it
providing personnel or rooms for quarantine in MINTO campus.
We have received praise and brickbats. This was something to be expected when everyone was under
stress and panicking. Our satisfaction was in providing the best facility that was humanly possible. We were

constantly monitored by the higher authorities and they did understand the problems and challenges we
faced.

If you are on the path you are meant to be and vision is powerful enough, everything falls into place. Though

my large network of family and friends, I was able to organize lot of donations to my Institute through CSR
funds and was able to procure many essentials like ventilators, thousands of PPE’s, N 95 masks, gadgets and

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