HYDERABAD: The Andhra Pradesh Biomedical Engineers Guild has condemned the callous manner, in which a premature baby was charred to death at Niloufer Hospital recently. "An accident of such nature in a neo-natal intensive care unit only shows the utter disregard for equipment safety and preventive maintenance protocols," guild convener Rangarajan Chilkur said here on Thursday.

The gruesome incident, he said, was just the tip of the iceberg and showcased the negligent approach to patient care in hospitals, which do not adhere to safety and standardisation norms.

"This is the most hazardous way of keeping the babies warm using a crude wiring system. It is all the more agonising as such systems were introduced without any advise from safety experts. These being crucial life saving equipment, the safety protocol should be rigorous," he told reporters here.

Glaring anomalies

Pointing out at glaring anomalies in maintenance of life saving equipment, Mr. Chilkur said none of the teaching hospitals in the State had qualified biomedical engineers to take care of the life saving equipment. "There are no log books to show that preventive maintenance checks were done on the neo-natal equipment in any of these hospitals. There is no data about their service record either," he maintained. "Shifting the blame onto lower rung staff is not the answer. Meticulous maintenance of life saving equipment is."

Equipment worth hundreds of crores of rupees was lying unused in hospitals of the State due to lack of maintenance and service personnel and also the suppliers changing brands frequently. Hospitals were reliant on suppliers alone for service and maintenance of medical equipment, which was a risky proposition.

Poor maintenance

Despite a quantum jump in budgetary allocations to the health sector in the State and the bed strength in 159 Government hospitals increasing by 50 per cent with the Government availing a Rs. 608-crore World Bank loan under the Andhra Pradesh First Referral Hospital Project, he said maintenance of this massive infrastructure had taken a beating with no provision for personnel to maintain them. "For all the thousands of crores worth medical equipment, only six to seven biomedical engineering staff was there."

The Guild sought immediate introduction of a standardisation plan for all services in hospitals and stringent quality control norms for performance of medical equipment and compulsory preventive maintenance checks.

He also underlined the need for setting up biomedical engineering departments in all the teaching hospitals.

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