NEW DELHI: A status report filed by the state government in Delhi high court says there is an acute crisis of manpower in Delhi’s state-run hospitals. For instance, in GB Pant Hospital , the largest of the government’s super-specialty institutions, 159 posts for doctors are vacant, while the paramedical/nursing and non-medical strengths are short by199 and 233, respectively.The situation in LNJP, Deen Dayal Upadhyay , Ambedkar and Guru Tegh Bahadur hospitals, among the biggest tertiary care centres in Delhi, are not reassuring either. The status report says that in LNJP, there are 41 vacancies among doctors, 15 among paramedical staff and 229 among the non-medical staff. Hospital sources said the figure for doctors related only to non-teaching specialists.The report was filed in response to the persistent queries of the bench of chief justice Rajendra Menon and justice V K Rao, which had sought to know last year about the specific steps taken by the government to improve health facilities. The bench is hearing a PIL filed by Madhu Bala, a schoolteacher in Karawal Nagar who lost her baby after admission to GTB Hospital for delivery.Bala’s lawyer Prashant Manchanda alleged in the petition that the hospital’s woeful infrastructure and lack of medical facilities were behind the loss of the baby and the near death of his client. He claimed the hospital did not perform a crucial surgery pleading “non-availability” of an OT. The petition urged the high court to step in “to immediately resurrect the dangerously dilapidated health system in public hospitals and utilise huge funds to infuse instant course correction and overhauling to prevent further health hazards”.To begin with, the concerned court demanded details of the “infrastructural facilities available, the requirement of manpower for running of the hospitals and various other issues like functioning of equipment, installation of necessary equipment for treating the patients, etc” at the five hospitals. It directed the government to furnish information on life-saving equipment, drugs, beds, operation theatres and staff, among others. However, at the previous hearing, the court asked for more details as it was not satisfied by the data furnished by Delhi government ’s Director General of Health Services on behalf of the hospitals.“The real crisis is the depleted nursing staff and technicians. There have been occasions when surgeries had to be postponed due to the unavailability of nursing orderlies and safai karamcharis,” admitted a doctor at LNJP, who did not want to be quoted.According to information furnished by the hospital, there are 436 sanctioned posts for safai karamcharis, of which 167 are currently vacant. There are no x-ray attendants, and the number of operation theatre attendants is also half the sanctioned strength.In DDU Hospital, the largest government hospital in west Delhi and visited by over 4,000 patients daily, the data compiled by the government and shared with the high court shows a quarter of the posts of regular doctors in the 640-bedded hospital is vacant. The vacancy among the resident doctors and nursing staff is 15% and 10%, respectively.