Power failure claims 14 patients

Chennai, Dec 5, 2015, dhns:

In a tragic incident, at least 14 people including five women, who were admitted to Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in a private hospital, died due to electricity failure.

The victims were admitted to MIOT hospital in Mannapakkam near Chennai two weeks ago for various health ailments.

However, due to heavy rain since Tuesday night, the electricity was totally cut and doctors were forced to run the electronic medical equipments including ventilators and monitors through generators.

Hospital sources said due to unprecedented rain, flood water entered hospital premises and damaged several generators.

“Though we tried our level best to treat through manual equipment, it failed. A total of 14 patients died between Wednesday and Thursday”, a senior doctor of the hospital said.

All the bodies were sent to Royapettah General Hospital for postmortem. “We received bodies of 14 patients from MIOT hospital,” Medical Education Director S Geethalakshmi said.

She said MIOT hospital authorities claimed that the patients died of natural causes.
“We will also ascertain the cause of death,” she said adding that her department also sought case records of the patients from MIOT hospital.

Geethalakshmi also said that bodies will be handed over to their respective families once the probe is completed.

Meanwhile, health secretary, J Radhakrishnan said MIOT hospital was treating more than 500 patients and out of which 75 were in critical condition as of Tuesday night. "All the critical patients were shifted to different hospitals", he added.