Madurai briefly came to a standstill on Tuesday evening due to unexpected thundershowers accompanied by strong gales and winds. This resulted in power shutdown across many places in the city for at least an hour. Local media are now reporting that three patients, who were admitted at Madurai Government Hospital, passed away on Tuesday evening due to ventilator failure caused by the power shutdown.
The three deceased have been identified as 52-year-old Ravindran from Srivalliputhur, 60-year-old Palaniammal from Ottanchathiram and 58-year-old Malliga from Melur.
Refuting claims that the power failure has caused their death, K Vanitha, Dean of the hospital, says, “All three patients were already in a critical condition. None of our ventilators faced failure due to the power cut. The generators started functioning immediately and around 7.20 pm, everything was restored to normalcy. In fact, we had 10 other patients connected to the ventilator and all of them are fine.”
She also adds that the generators were functioning well during the one hour that power was shut from 6.20 pm to 7.20 pm on Tuesday and that none of the patients’ death was due to lack of oxygen or ventilator failure. "
While Ravindran was brought in for accidental fall with grievous injury to the brain, Palaniammal was admitted due to head injury. Malliga, who was operated for aneurysm in Velammal Hospital, was transferred to the General Hospital after nine days of treatment at the private hospital.
While local media linked the deaths to ventilator failure, the families of the deceased have not filed any complaint.
According to independent weather blogger Chennai Rains, some parts of north interior Tamil Nadu and west interior Tamil Nadu could see isolated convective thunderstorms due to the intrusion of lower level Easterly winds and the moisture from the sea breeze. As per India Meteorological Department, Madurai South and Thallakulam, both belonging to Madurai district, has recorded 6 cms rainfall as of May 8.