Excavator turns into ambulance but fails to save Manipur patient
GUWAHATI: An excavator was turned into an ambulance to take a patient from Manipur to the nearest hospital in Myanmar on Saturday, in yet another instance of the deplorable condition of health care in the country.
The patient, however, could not withstand the journey and died on the way, community leaders said, alleging disparity in development between the state’s majority Meitei-dominated Imp hal Valley and the surrounding hills, inhabited mostly by tribal communities.
In a country where bullock carts, handcarts, bicycles and shoulders—a returned into mortuary vans due to lack of ambulances ,40- year-old Thangtinlen Baite got his final ride in the bucket of an excavator used to dig or remove earth.
There have been several instances in different parts of the country where kin of diseased were forced to take unusual mode of transportation to carry bodies in the absence of ambulance.
Baite, suffering from an unknown illness, belonged to New Gamnom village in Kheng- joi subdivision of Manipur’s Chandel district. The village is close to border with Myanmar.
Hi skin had the option of taking him to the nearest primary health sub-centre on the Indian side at Sehlon, about two kilometres from the village. But locals said it has had no doctor or medicine for ages. The other health sub-cent re in the area — at New Somtal 20 km away — too was of no help.
Villagers then decided to take Baite to Khampat Hospital in Myanmar in the excavator they requisitioned from a construction site. He died midway to the hospital.