BRD deaths national tragedy: Cong VP
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Saturday termed the deaths of infants at Gorakhpur’s BRD Medical College as a “national tragedy.”
Addressing newspersons here after visiting villages and meeting the medical college tragedy victims’ families, Rahul said it was clear that the kids died because of lack of oxygen and neglect.
“People used AMBU bags to support respiration in ailing kids. It is clear that there was lack of oxygen,” he said.
Attacking chief minister Yogi Adityanath and Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the tragedy, Rahul said: “It (tragedy) is an indicator of the healthcare system in India.”
“Modi ji talks about New India. Is this New India? We don’t want his New India. We want the India where people take their kids to hospitals and come out happy from them,” the Congress vice-president said.
He blamed the UP government for the tragedy and said: “The government should stop covering it (tragedy) up. Yogi ji, stop the cover up and take action.”
Rahul said he called off his visit to the medical college on Saturday as he realized that the chief minister’s recent visit there had caused a lot of trouble to the ailing kids. “I called off my visit in the interest of patients and children.” UPCC chief Raj Babbar was also with Rahul at the press conference.
GORAKHPUR : The BRD Medical College, in the national and even international spotlight in connection with many child deaths since August 9, has another skeleton in its cupboard.
The medical college’s physical medicine and rehabilitation (PMR) department that helps Japanese Encephalitis survivors, who invariably end up with disabilities, has no doctors.
All the three doctors associated with the department have left it one after the other over nonpayment of salaries.
The department is being run by 11 personnel, none of them doctors. They are four expert therapists, three technical hands, and four class four attendants. Even these 11 personnel have not been paid their salaries for the last 28 months. “This, despite the fact that the centre has proved its utility each passing year. The number of patients increases by a thousand each year,” said a staffer. The PMR department records show that the department attended 7,525 cases in 2016-17 and 5,750 cases in 2015-16. This year, the figure has already crossed the 4,000-mark even as the peak season has set in for Japanese Encephalitis and the deadlier Acute Encephalitis Syndrome.
In the first year after its inception in 2010, the department attended to 1,482 children.
One of the four therapists at the PMR department said: “The encephalitis ward has lean phases too when the JE-AES peak season wanes. But, we do not have any lean period because JE and AES survivors need our therapy for years.”
The central government had set up the PMR department in 2010 under a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the state government.
Under the MoU (which HT has a copy of), the centre was to set up the department and run it for five years. After that, the state government would take over the department and regularise the services of all the contractual employees.
But the state government did not take over the department at the end of the five-year term. And the central government’s term was over. As of now, the PMR is no one’s baby.
“Towards the end of the central government’s term, it paid us outstanding (salaries) of 25 months in March 2015. By this time, the three doctors had already left. Now, we have outstanding (salaries) of 28 months,” said a staffer who did not wish to be named.
From April 2015 to July 2017, the total salary dues of the 11 staffers amounted to Rs 36,56, 800.
The scenario is a grim reminder of the non-payment of dues to the oxygen suppliers, alleged to be reason for 33 child deaths on August 10 and 11.
“It was because of the intervention of Gorakhpur MP Yogi Adityanath in 2015 that the central government paid us 25 months’ salary. But now when he is the chief minister, we are troubled over our salaries. We have to run from pillar to post, from the medical college principal to the medical education department in Lucknow, the secretariat there, and even the Janata Darbar of the chief minister. We could not meet the CM at the darbar, but the officers there took our memorandum,” said another staffer.
He added, “Doctors get jobs easily, so all the three of our doctors left. But we are in a difficult situation.”
On August 8, Dr Anita Bhatnagar Jain, additional chief secretary (medical education department) visited the BRD Medical College and a delegation of the PMR department met her. A delegation member claimed that she assured that the problems of the department will be looked into.
Hindustan Times tried speaking to Jain, but she could not be contacted.
Ramesh Srivastava, a motorcycle workshop owner in Gorakhpur, has no idea about the problems of the department, but he visits the place every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the treatment and rehabilitation of his three-year-old son Shivansh Srivastava. Shivansh was diagnosed with JE in February 2015 and the BRD Medical College’s encephalitis ward saved him.
“He was treated well at the hospital. Post recovery, the entire left side of the body was paralysed. But, this PMR department has turned my son near normal now,” Srivastava said.