ROHTAS DOCTOR SEEN IN VIRAL VIDEO CLIP FACES ACTION

PATNA: A district-level inquiry has recently recommended disciplinary action against a doctor for giving incorrect statement to the media in a video clip in which he is purportedly seen attending to an injured patient under the light of a smartphone at the Rohtas district hospital on June 4, said an official privy to the probe report.

The probe report, sent to the state health secretariat last week, has also indicted Rohtas civil surgeon for “lack of effective control of his subordinates”.

“The doctor’s statements to the media and to the probe committee were contradictory. In his deposition to the probe team, he almost retracted from his alleged statement to the media that the power outage at the hospital was a recurrent phenomenon. In his written statement to the probe team, the doctor said the power tripping, only briefly, was due to a fault in the miniature circuit breaker (MCB),” said a senior officer requesting anonymity.

The video clip circulating on social media showed a patient, allegedly with gunshot injury, as claimed by another doctor, being attended to under the light of a smartphone due to power outage at the emergency of the Rohtas district hospital on June 4.

“The patient was being bandaged when power tripped for a brief duration. It was during the changeover of electricity from normal to generator supply that someone switched on the light of his smartphone while the doctor was attending to the patient, and its video became viral,” said a doctor, requesting anonymity.

Rohtas district magistrate Dharmendra Kumar, however, said the patient had sustained injury in a road traffic accident.

“The power outage at the hospital due to a fault in the MCB lasted around two minutes. The MCB has been replaced and the problem fixed,” he said.

“We have sent the inquiry report, with our recommendation, to the state health secretariat,” added Kumar.