(This story originally appeared in on Jul 24, 2016)

HYDERABAD: The state-run Gandhi Hospital , a premier 1,200-bed medical facility in the city, is under a cloud after 21 patients died on Friday and the medical staff blamed power outages for the deaths.Some doctors said electricity first tripped around 3pm and then continued to do so at regular intervals. Although there were four generators on standby, the hospital claimed they had developed snags and could not be used after power lines were later cut off, to find the cause of the tripping.The deaths occurred in specialty wards, including the surgical intensive care unit, neo-natal intensive care unit, respiratory intensive care unit, acute medical care unit and the emergency ward, all of which were affected by Friday's power failure. Telangana health minister Dr C Laxma Reddy said it would be wrong to directly blame the deaths in a top state-run tertiary hospital on the power outages as they get "maximum number of last-stage cases"."In my 14 years of working at this hospital, on an average, 10 patients die every day," said Dr R Raghu, general secretary (Gandhi Hospital unit), Telangana Government Doctors' Association.Professor C V Chalam, the superintendent in charge of Gandhi Hospital, told TOI that each of the 21 deaths would have to be probed to determine if any of them was directly or indirectly linked to the blackout. "We will take up this exercise on Monday," he said.Asked what went wrong with the power supply, Professor Chalam, who was at the hospital till 12.30 am supervising the seven engineers struggling to restore power supply, said power was cut off to repair the lines after the intermittent cuts. Last month, there had been a similar blackout. The hospital relied on its four generators, using two at a time till the power supply was restored, he added."There is a three-phase power supply to the hospital, but with the lines tripping on and off, our staff found it difficult to manage uninterrupted supply," he said.A source at the hospital told TOI that some of the deaths on Friday were of patients who were on life support system, such as ventilators and incubators in the neo-natal ward. Other emergency equipment that needed high voltage power to function was also affected."I used my mobile phone torch to carry out an emergency surgery on a 28-year old man with an infected intestine," said a senior doctor, who was on duty in one of the affected departments.Though ambu-bags providing hand-pressed oxygen were used on all patients who were on ventilators, the source said it was possible that some of the attendants may have administered the gas incorrectly. This job is usually handled by hospital staff, but the task was left to the attendants on Friday.Though ambu-bags providing hand-pressed oxygen were used on all patients who were on ventilators, the source said it was possible that some of the attendants may have administered the gas incorrectly. This job is usually handled by hospital staff, but the task was left to the attendants on Friday.The Gandhi Hospital mostly serves patients from the 10 districts of Telangana, but also attracts people from neighbouring Maharashtra and Karnataka. The affected families could not be reached for their response.Southern Power Distribution Company Limited's Secunderabad divisional engineer Rajaram Reddy confirmed Friday's power failure in the hospital. He said the supply had been hit between 9pm and 10.45pm due to some problems at the local sub-station."We restored the supply at 10.45pm. We are aware that the hospital had some trouble with its own generating equipment."