No beds or staff: Victoria hospital is ailing

HAMEED ASHRAF | NT 
BENGALURU, OCT. 16

A video doing the rounds on social media, presumably shot by patients, depicts a sordid scene at Victoria Hospital. Crippled by an acute shortage of infrastructure, the video shows patients lying on the floor to receive treatment and hospital personnel lifting corpses without stretchers in the absence of mortuary staff.

Doctors admit that the last few days have been strenuous as the hospital deals with a shortage of beds, stretchers and staff amid a surge of patients. In the video, patients lie on the floor as they are treated by doctors, there are no wheelchairs for differently-abled patients and people stand in line waiting for admission.

According to Dr Ramesh Krishna, the Medical Superintendent, there has been a surge in the number of patients over the last few days and not enough staff to see all of them. All the emergency and ICU beds are full and unattended patients are being shifted to other hospitals, he added.