Jalandhar, July 31 -- Punjab health minister Dr Balbir Singh on Wednesday suspended the medical superintendent, senior medical officer and consultant anaesthesiologist of the Jalandhar civil hospital, where three patients died in the ICU after disruption in the oxygen supply on July 27, besides terminating the services of a recently appointed house surgeon. Acting on the report of a probe team that established gross negligence, the health minister said medical superintendent Dr Raj Kumar, senior medical officer Dr Surjit Singh and consultant anaesthesiologist Dr Sunakshi had been placed under suspension, while the services of Dr Shaminder Singh, the house surgeon, have been terminated with immediate effect. Three patients, including a 15-year-old snake-bite victim, a 32-year-old drug overdose patient and a 30-year-old lung disease patient, died between 7.15pm and 7.50pm due to insufficient oxygen supply. "It is an unpardonable negligence and serious dereliction, which cannot be tolerated and exemplary punishment has to be given," the health minister said. In its initial report, the high-level technical probe team reported poor management on the part of the hospital authorities in overseeing the operations of the oxygen plant. The team found that instead of a technician overseeing the plant, a contractual ward attendant - a non-technical employee - was on duty when a malfunction in the plant caused the disruption of supply. He was ill-equipped to deal with the exigency, leading to the death of the three critically ill patients in the trauma centre. The investigation was conducted by a team of doctors and officials from the Punjab Health Systems Corporation (PHSC). Dr Balbir said the technical committee constituted to look into the incident had submitted its report, which mentioned serious anomalies in the functioning of the hospital authorities. "There is no point in taking action against any ward boy or attendant, when the top functionaries failed to perform their duties despite availability of all the resources," he said. He added that this action is taken on the basis of preliminary findings and the health department would continue its probe against the erring officials. "A detailed inquiry is on and if required, these three suspended doctors are likely to be dismissed from service and they will lose all retirement benefits," he said. The minister added that it is an unfortunate incident and he personally felt sorry that the health department could not save the lives of critically ill patients. "The negligence on the behalf of doctors was evident as despite availability of four sources of oxygen at the hospital, the poor management led to the deaths," the minister said. On reviewing the duty roster, the probe panel found that a non-technical Class-4 employee was handling the PSA plant operations that evening. The staff member, typically assigned to work as a ward attendant, was deployed in place of a trained technician. The probe found that the oxygen shortage went unnoticed until 6.30pm, when the first patient on ventilator support began showing symptoms of low oxygen levels. The trauma centre informed the PSA plant about the issue around 6.50pm, 20 minutes after the first signs of oxygen deprivation. The Class-4 employee manually switched the oxygen supply from the PSA plant to backup turbo cylinders in under two minutes, according to the preliminary probe. "It came to notice that the doctors in the ICU were unaware of low oxygen pressure till the first patient showed symptoms," it stated....