Srinagar: Knowing neither rest nor fear, 37 biomedical engineers from south India are working tirelessly in Jammu and Kashmir to attend to critical-care equipment in government hospitals.
Since the Covid-19 lockdown began, these unsung heroes have been shuttling between district hospitals in J&K to repair ventilators, defibrillators and various life-saving and diagnostic machines.
They work for the J&K health department under a public-private partnership (PPP) and are just a call away.
“The biomedical engineers are playing a vital role in the Covid-19 preparedness of the health department. They are doing the job despite the infection risk and shortage of equipment in hospitals,” said Director Health Services Kashmir, Dr Samir Mattoo.
“Whenever our hospitals face any issue with any machine, our staff calls the toll-free number and the engineers reach us the same day to repair the faulty machine,” he said.
Rajesh B, 28, who from Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, works more than 12 hours every day to repair ventilators and other critical care machines in hospitals.
“We stay on-call for 24 hours because we handle critical care equipment. Sometimes we work late in the night, depending on the level of urgency,” he said.
“Our local colleagues help us feel better as they know the locations and people well,” Rajesh said.
Recently, Rajesh received a call at 9pm from the Pulwama district hospital where a baby warmer had broken down.
“It was an urgent call, so we reached the hospital immediately and repaired the machine till midnight,” he said.
Rajesh said he was happy that he was making a contribution during this pandemic.
“People and government here need us, so we decided to stay back despite health risks,” he added.
Ever since he has been called to J&K for this special duty by Mediciti, a Hyderabad-based company, just a week before the coronavirus lockdown, he hasn’t gone to his home in Andhra Pradesh. He is residing along with his colleagues at a private accommodation in Srinagar.
Like him, there 36 more biomedical engineers who are working in different shifts these days.
Though they are doing their jobs with full responsibility, they say they also feel scared whenever they get a call from hospitals where Covid patients are admitted.
“Sometimes I feel scared to touch the emergency equipment due to Covid-19 risk. My family calls me every day and tells me to come home soon. But I tell them the importance of my work,” said Ravi Shekhar, a biomedical engineer from Hyderabad.
Shekhar, 31, said he deals with X-ray machines which are critical in radio-diagnostics, especially during the pandemic.
“I have so far repaired ten X-ray machines in different district hospitals. The treatment of patients was otherwise getting affected, so our role is important, which is why we are working despite the health risk,” he said.
These engineers are working in J&K under Biomedical Equipment Management and Maintenance Programme of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India. The programme is designed by the National Health System Resource Centre for National Health Mission-J&K.
“We have repaired more than 160 equipment during the lockdown including ventilators, defibrillators, lab equipment, ECG, USG and other general equipment,” said Aman Bali, the team leader of the biomedical engineers in J&K.
“Some of the machines were defunct for many years but our engineers made them functional with their expertise,” he said.
Bali added that local engineers stationed at their respective native-districts were also of great help during the lockdown period.

Manzoor ul-Hassan