On August 12 around 9 pm, a certain Rajendra Gupta (45) was admitted to V N Desai Municipal General Hospital at Santa Cruz (East), drunk and injured.

Doctors found out that he had an injury in the inside of his mouth and an tracheostomy was urgently required. However, since there was no anesthetist present in the hospital at that late hour the operation was delayed and Gupta died two hours after admission. The chief medical superintendent of peripheral hospitals, Sheila Pershad, said she would look into the matter.

The death only underscores the general impression in the public about the peripheral civic hospitals being ill-equipped to handle emergencies. Medical Officer Dr Divya Shah of V N Desai Hospital today admitted that the hospital was facing a severe shortage of anesthetists,despite being attached to the Nair hospital.

As a rule, the eight peripheral hospitals are attached to one of the three teaching hospitals (KEM, Sion or Nair) for the supply of anesthetists on regular basis. Nair hospital for instance provides anesthetists to Bhagwati Hospital, V N Desai Hospital, ENT Hospital, Bhajekar Ophthalmology Hospital, Kamathipura Gynaecology Hospital and S K Patil General Hospital at Malad. But while the three anesthetists who are sent to Bhagwati do not match the requirements there, Nair has stopped sending any to Malad for the past six months now.

Nair hospital itself, despite having around 70 odd anesthetists on its rolls, feels the crunch. At Bhagwati Hospital, where Nair hospital used to earlier post six anesthetists, now only selected Operation Theatres (OTs) get them. But the shortage of anesthetists is just a part of a bigger problem. Peripheral hospitals in the western suburbs alone have 220 posts vacant.

Health Committee chairman, Sardar Tara Singh, however,claims that most of 220 vacancies are in the backward categories and were thus impossible to fill till the right candidate was found. He said he has proposed to the municipal commissioner that BMC should begin to appoint doctors on temporary basis. ``If there is no action I will speak too the chief minister.''