Emergency medicine shortage hits patients at GTB Hospital

In India, by the time a patient reaches an emergency, there is already delay... If their family have to run around and get medicines, it only adds risk to their life.

- Ridhima Gupta

Stepping into the emergency ward at Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, patients and their families are confronted by an easy-to-miss sheet of paper pasted near the entrance.

But the text on it is anything but easy to miss.

It contains a handwritten list of critical medications and supplies currently unavailable within the hospital, a stark preface to the ordeal awaiting patients inside one of Delhi's largest government-run healthcare facilities.

For almost two months, this list has only grown longer, and with it, the desperation of families who are thrust into a relentless scramble to procure life-saving drugs from outside the hospital, often delaying treatment and imposing a financial burden that many can barely afford.

A shortage of this magnitude, particularly in an emergency ward, is no minor inconvenience.

The very nature of an emergency room is urgency-where seconds can make the difference between life and death. Patients arrive here with life-threatening conditions.

But in their moment of desperation, many are handed a shopping list of drugs and supplies.