The room at Medical College and Hospital that was presented as a cardiopulmonary resuscitation facility to medical council inspectors last year now serves as a resting room for doctors.

After inspection of the state-run hospital on April 3 and 4, 2007, the three-member Medical Council of India (MCI) team described the cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) room as “well-equipped” in a report to the council’s executive committee.

The report (a copy of which is with Metro) stated that the CPR room — a part of the emergency ward — has “three beds, two ventilators, one defibrillator and one pulse oxymeter”. The machines are vital for saving lives in an emergency.

On February 5, Metro found parts of only two of the machines mentioned in the report in the CPR room. Some doctors and students were smoking and relaxing inside. Several junior and senior doctors of the hospital, who did not want to be quoted, said the CPR room was shut down long ago and is now used as a retiring room.

The medical superintendent and vice-principal of the hospital, Arup Roy, conceded that the room has been abandoned and patients are not treated there any more. “The concept of CPR has changed. Now, we don’t need the room; CPR is administered in the wards,” claimed Roy.

He and other officials could not explain why the room is described as “active and well-equipped” in the MCI report.

Several doctors said the hospital authorities “furnished” the room with the equipment only for the MCI visit. “It is almost impossible to administer CPR to a critical patient in time after admitting him to a ward. It is absurd not to have a CPR room in the emergency section. Even small hospitals have one,” said a doctor.

A member of the MCI said: “Authorities of many hospitals, including government-run ones, arrange for non-existent facilities to satisfy our inspectors. There is little the council can do to stop this. If there is a complaint, we can send a team on a surprise visit. But we hardly get such complaints.”