BENGALURU: It was a matter of life and death for a patient. A doctor, who was getting late for his surgery because of the notorious Bengaluru traffic, decided to abandon his car, and run the rest of the distance to the hospital.
Dr Govind Nandakumar, a gastroenterology surgeon, was driving to Manipal Hospital, Sarjapur, to perform an emergency laparoscopic gallbladder surgery. When he was in the last stretch of his journey, he realised he was getting horribly late. “The last stretch usually taken 10 mins. I was stuck in the traffic, getting nervous about being late. I checked Google Maps which showed that it will take another 45 minutes,” he told TNSE.
He disembarked the car and decided to cover the rest of the journey running on the Sarjapur-Marathahalli stretch. “I have a driver, so, I was able to leave the car behind. It was easy for me to run because I gym regularly. I ran three km to hospital, and was in time for the surgery,” he said.
However, this is not the first time he has faced such a situation. “I have had to make the journey on foot a few times in other areas of Bengaluru too, sometimes crossing railway lines. I was not anxious since our hospital has adequate staff and infrastructure to take good care of a patient. The situation may not be the same for small hospitals,” he said.
“Even patients, their families are anxious waiting for the doctors. What if a patient in an ambulances is stuck in traffic? There was no space even for an ambulance to pass,” he told TNSE.