Bengaluru: In a stark reflection of delays in equipment maintenance at govt hospitals, it took nearly a year to repair ventilators at the trauma and emergency care centre (TECC) of Victoria Hospital in the city.According to sources, eight ventilators and five electric patient cots in the ICU had begun malfunctioning in June 2025, severely disrupting operations at the centre. Over the following months, several other critical equipment, including an operation table and a CT contrast machine, also broke down. Hospital authorities initially approached the third-party service provider responsible for maintaining the equipment. “After a few months, the company began citing the ongoing war situation as a reason for being unable to procure spare parts and carry out repairs,” a source at the hospital said.Dr Kavya ST, director-cum-dean of Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute, under which TECC functions, said, “We issued repeated notices asking them to repair the equipment, but we were not satisfied with their service or efficiency. Hence, we decided to terminate the contract and are now directly sourcing services from the original manufacturer of the ventilators.”She added most of the ventilators have now been repaired, with the remaining expected to be fixed soon. “Even when some ventilators were not functioning, patient care was not affected as we had backup equipment,” she said, adding the faulty electric cots were also replaced to ensure patient safety and comfort.The issue also drew the attention of Karnataka Lokayukta, which recently took suo motu cognisance of irregularities at Victoria Hospital, including the malfunctioning ventilators that rendered six ICU beds unusable.
