Just a few days after the shocking video footage of a ward boy stitching up a patient at a district hospital in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr surfaced, a similar incident of gross medical negligence allegedly took place at the government-run SSKM Hospital here.
And the images beamed by a regional news channel showed a Group D employee putting the sutures on a patient in the hospital’s emergency ward.
And a hospital cleaner was seen administering the treatment to the patient who had hurt his head.
“He (cleaner) didn’t look like a doctor the way he was giving the stitches. I was getting hurt and there was bleeding. If a doctor had done it, it would have definitely gone better,” said the patient.
Incidentally, SSKM is the state’s only government-run super specialty hospital.
Meanwhile, the hospital superintendent said that he was yet to receive any complaint regarding the incident.
He also said that a few emergency staff and interns were present in the wards and it had to be probed as to why a cleaner had to perform the medical procedure.
“This may have happened. But we need to see who all were on duty. We have to probe the entire matter and see why a cleaner was made to stitch. But there are certain trained Group D staff in the wards who help in times of emergency,”said Pradip Mitra, Director SSKM.
In the last one year, a slew of medical negligence cases and lack of medical infrastructure in government hospitals had made headlines in the state.
And these included a woman’s toe being bitten off by a rat, a drunk doctor showing up for duty and acid being rubbed on a patient instead of rectified spirit.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who holds the Health portfolio, has made it clear that she wants to revamp the state’s healthcare system.