Empathize with the outcast! Recital of the Hideous!
Editorial in the Statesman
January 8, 2019
The silence of the administration in Patna is deafening. The gruesome tragedy and the attitude of the hospital are only symptoms of the overwhelming sclerosis that has now served to extend the loop of the disastrous.
In the pic: A burns patient brought to a state-run hospital in Bihar's Vaishali district was allegedly thrown into a place meant for dumping hospital waste. (Photo: SNS)
How long is a human being is going to be dumped in a garbage waste in our India of ‘Acche Din?’ It was due to the evidence of this photo that this victim was moved to a hospital. It is all due to the criminal negligence on the part of many, to which we are coresponsible.
Nothing happens until it happens to you. When a plane crash or train accident happens, the first we enquire is, if there is any one of our kith and kin is involved. It is due to the lack of that sense of humanity that we all are brothers and sisters, in this world wide human family.
You know the remedy! Cultivate that sense of brotherhood and sisterhood with the rest of humanity, near and far. That is the mighty little, you and I can do in this context. james kottoor, editor ccv.
Please read below editorial in the Statesman
The outrage in a government hospital in Bihar’s Vaishali district is as disgraceful as the rape of inmates in an orphanage, run by an NGO with a minister’s patronage. It would be a gross understatement to call the incident inhuman; the crime against humanity is concordant with the travesty of mores in Nitish Kumar’s Bihar.
To be fair to the chief minister, the state does have a long history of such aberrations. To put it bluntly as we must, even animals are treated better in veterinary hospitals. It thus comes about that a man with severe burn injuries is said to have been dumped into a garbage vat used for hospital waste.
If a human being can be equated with such waste, there is life yet in the debate on the quality of life as the nation stumbles in its quest for the elusive acche din. Of a scintilla of treatment there was none; of care and cure even less. The disgrace must be collective in terms of public health as a critical parameter of welfare.
Both concepts, however noble theoretically, have been binned and literally so. The insensitivity of the hospital staff strains credulity, and the brazen violation of the Hippocratic oath is much too obvious to be underlined. According to a report in this newspaper, the government was delightfully ignorant till a photograph of the victim, crying amidst the garbage, went viral. The camera doesn’t lie, and it was only on the basis of the photographic evidence that he was shifted to the emergency ward.
A few questions need to be asked and answered in course of the investigation, however routine. Why was the man dumped into a vat? Who were the culprits and on whose instructions did they carry out the hideous task? Why wasn’t the patient shifted to the nearby Sadar hospital in Hajipur, the headquarters of Vaishali district, as advised by a section of doctors? As the tendency to airbrush the truth is pronounced in Bihar, answers to such queries may not be forthcoming anytime soon. The incident arguably surpasses the worst instance of criminal negligence in any of the country’s state hospitals.
The silence of the administration in Patna is deafening. The gruesome tragedy and the attitude of the hospital are only symptoms of the overwhelming sclerosis that has now served to extend the loop of the disastrous. Last October, a dog had sneaked into the operation theatre of a government hospital in Buxar, from there to walk away with the amputated limb of a patient who died soon after.
In Darbhanga, a newborn died after being nibbled by rats in a leading state hospital in the district. A road accident victim died at the Patna Medical College and Hospital in November in the absence of doctors. The recital of the hideous can only lengthen in a state where human life is at a discount. Hospital care is in the dumps, almost synonymous with Vaishali’s garbage vat.
