The plight of medical apathy in Kolkata’s government hospitals came to the fore when a 20-year-old youth was denied admission by two major medical hospitals, even at the risk of losing a leg.
The boy, identified as Krishna Acharya, first visited Sagar Dutt Medical College Hospital and was rejected from there. The factory worker then visited RG Kar medical college, where the hospital kept postponing his date of admission. Every time he approached the hospital he was left with a note, which read, ‘Regret, No bed’.
The plastic surgery department in RG Kar medical college first gave Krishna Acharya July 17 as the date for admission, which was postponed to July 18, and the latest date promised is August 7.
The youth had been desperately running around to get himself a hospital admission since he met with an accident on July 14. He fell from his cycle and a car passed over his right leg leaving his right foot in a terrible condition.
Despite his deteriorating conditions, Krishna Acharya has not been able to find himself a hospital bed and now he fears amputation. But the chief doctor at RG Kar’s plastic surgery department, Rupnarayan Bhattacharya, claims that Krishna’s injury is not serious, and other critical patients needed to be attended urgently. He said the injury does not even require hospitalisation, saying it can be treated at home with proper dressing.
When asked why Krishna was informed that bed is not available and why he was asked to apply for a bed later if he does not need to be admitted, the doctor said that it was a mistake done by junior doctors. But the same Dr. has said that Bhattacharya Krishna needs surgery, and he even prescribed him some tests for the surgery.
However, this is not the first incident throwing light on the government hospital’s apathy towards its patients. In yet another shocking case, on July 4, a woman patient was forced to share a stretcher with an unknown male patient while being wheeled to the X-Ray room at the Maharaja Yeshwantrao Hospital in Indore, the largest state-run hospital in Madhya Pradesh.
In a similar case, the staff at the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose (NSCB) Medical College in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, was caught on camera dragging a patient to the X-Ray room on a bedsheet.
In another shocking case, on June 22, a 72-year-old man who was declared dead by a doctor at Bina District Hospital in Madhya Pradesh was found to be still breathing when his body was being sent for a postmortem after spending a whole night in the mortuary.
Moreover, reports on the outbreak of Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur had also revealed the unpreparedness, callousness and the apathy of the government and the hospitals falling under them.
