Three patients die at Bu Ali Hospital in Zahedan following repeated power outages

According to eyewitnesses, including medical staff, on July 25, three patients at Bu Ali Hospital in Zahedan lost their lives due to a power outage on their oxygen machines. Hospital officials have claimed that the cause of death for the three was their physical problems. This is despite the fact that, according to some medical staff at the hospital, the prolonged power outage led to the shutdown of the respiratory systems and the death of these three patients.

According to HRANA news agency, quoting ISNA, three patients lost their lives at Bu Ali Hospital in Zahedan following a long-term power outage.

According to this report, on July 25, a sudden power outage and fluctuation at Bu Ali Hospital in Zahedan created difficult conditions for the medical staff, and at the same time, it was announced that three patients hospitalized in this medical center lost their lives due to the shutdown of oxygen generators.

On the same day, it was announced that the patients' deaths were due to a power outage, and following that, officials from the provincial electricity distribution company emphasized in a statement that they were not responsible for the power outage.

Although eyewitnesses from the medical staff and the patients' companions emphasize that these three patients lost their lives due to a power outage and the failure of oxygen generators, Bu Ali Hospital officials have not confirmed the deaths of these three patients following a power outage and have claimed that these patients lost their lives due to a physical problem.

Those who were at Bu Ali Hospital that day say that the electricity went out at 12:00 for 3 hours.

A Zahedan citizen who had a patient hospitalized in the same hospital said: "I admitted my wife to Bu Ali Hospital on July 3rd due to severe lung involvement, and because I was worried about her condition, I stayed over her. In those days, the number of patients and deaths from coronavirus was high. In addition to my wife, one of my friends was also hospitalized in the emergency isolation room, and in the bed next to him was a critically ill patient who was breathing with a device called CPAP. They said he was from Saravan and had no companion. It was 12 o'clock when the power in the hospital hall suddenly went out, and then the oxygen machines in the emergency room turned off. The hospital immediately went into chaos, and nurses, matrons, and supervisors came to the patients with hand-held ambubags, and one of them was the same Saravan patient who had severe breathing problems due to the power outage, but in the end, they could not do anything for him and the patient died.

These statements are confirmed by a staff member in the hospital's treatment department, who does not want his name to be revealed.

The person said: "In the hospital emergency room, patients with blood oxygen levels below 70 percent are admitted. The blood oxygen levels of patients admitted to the ICU are even lower than this number. When the power goes out, conditions are even more difficult for patients admitted to the ICU. On that day, when the power went out for 3 hours, the hospital's medical staff did their best to ensure that the oxygen supply to the patients was not interrupted, but the prolonged power outage led to the respiratory machines shutting down and the deaths of 3 patients, one of whom was the man in charge of the hospital's emergency room and the other 2 were patients admitted to the ICU."

In response to the question of why there was a time delay in turning on the oxygen machines despite the presence of a generator in the hospital and the machines were not turned on immediately, he says: Oxygen machines are very large and are controlled by several computers. When there is a power fluctuation, these machines malfunction before the generator starts and need to be restarted. This causes at least a 40-minute delay in turning the machines back on.

Although people present at the hospital claim that the incident of July 25 was due to a power outage, Shahabuddin Mashaei, the head of Zahedan's Bu-Ali Hospital, confirmed that the power outage occurred that day, but claimed that the deaths of these three patients were not due to a power outage.

According to Mr. Mashaei, the oxygen generators are connected to each other, and if a power outage were to cause the death of 3 people, more than 10 patients connected to these devices should have died on the same day, but this did not happen.

In response to the question that some members of the hospital's medical staff and of course the companions present at the hospital confirm that after the power outage and the shutdown of the oxygen-generating devices due to the serious condition of 2 patients in the ICU and 1 patient in the emergency room, the nurses were unable to prevent the deaths of the patients with manual breathing machines, the head of Bu Ali Zahedan Hospital explained: "This may have happened, but there is oxygen above the beds and when the devices are cut off, the oxygen supply to the patients is not cut off and they immediately keep the patient with an ambu bag. But there is also the issue that the intubated patient in the emergency room may not be in good physical condition and may even die if the power is not cut off. We have deaths every day, but does the power go out every day? There is a CPU device in this hospital, and this device can keep the equipment running for up to 2 hours without the need for a generator."

According to the head of Bu Ali Hospital in Zahedan, there are power fluctuations in this hospital, the reason for which is the increased power consumption due to the presence of oxygen generators.

Source: HRANA