lucknow up law minister brijesh pathak has expressed his anguish on the stressedout health facilities amid covid surge in a letter to senior health officials he also said that he tried desperately to save the life of noted historian and writer yogesh praveen but his efforts proved futilein his letter to additional chief secretary medical health amit mohan prasad and principal secretary medical education alok kumar pathak writes i am shocked to see that private laboratories have been asked to stop covid testing while government hospitals are giving reports after five to six days said pathakin the onepage letter pathak who is mla from lucknow lamented that he had received a frantic call from the residence of yogesh praveen informing him that his condition was critical and needed an ambulance i contacted the office of the chief medical officer lucknow but the ambulance never reached he addedin his letter the law minister further expressed his concern that when there was a need for at least 17000 test kits a day for the coronavirus test there was availability of hardly 10000i am flooded with requests desperate pleas from citizens of lucknow to save their lives and often find the district health authorities insensitive and inefficient said pathak adding that higher authorities should immediately intervene to put medical infrastructure in order at the earliestwhen toi asked yogesh praveens brother kamesh srivastava about the ambulance delay he denied it i received a call from the ambulance driver who was very far away anticipating that valuable time may be wasted in waiting we took him to the hospital i have no complaints with anyone in this regard kamesh also ruled out the possibility of covid19 in his brother though he had not taken the test he was fine had no history of any agerelated or lifestyle ailment whatsoever barring the mild fever he had in the morning there was no problem he had not ventured out of the house over the past 15 days and only a few were allowed inside so the chances of covid19 taking him away are negligible the brother said