Clash of ‘titans’ in JK Lon Hospital made things messy

By Archana Sharma

Kota, Jan 6 (SocialNews.XYZ) The sorry state of affairs at Kota's JK Lon hospital, where more than 110 children died in over a month, may be due to irregularities but no one cared to look into them.

The tussle between former hospital superintendent H.L. Meena and Head of Department (HOD) paediatrician Amritlal Bairwa, who was removed on Sunday, was known to one and all. Both of them preferred tossing the ball into each other's court which left the infants at the mercy of God in the hospital, said hospital employees.

While Bairwa acted like guest of honour who rarely visited the hospital, Meena never looked into the poor state of affairs of hospital's life saving equipment, they said further.

The critical patients which included new born infants were left to the mercy of medical trainees as seniors maintained a distance from the wards. Even the trainees spent most of their duty time talking on phones. When the parents approached nurses, they were scolded for no reasons and were even asked to check if drip and oxygen is being supplied to kids smoothly.

Padma, one of the mothers of the deceased boy who was just five month old, said, "There were no visiting doctors and no one to listen to my pain when my son was suffering breathing troubles in the emergency ward of the hospital."

"When I called the staff, they scolded me and asked me to check if oxygen was being supplied smoothly," she said, expressing her inability to do the same. "How could I know how to check the smooth supply of oxygen when I am a mother of an ailing son who is unaware of technical things, she said.

Hospital superintendent Suresh Dulara, meanwhile, confirmed that irregularities were reported in the hospital. "Yes, there was lack of coordination between Meena and Bairwa which brought the hospital to the messy condition."

Complaints against Meena were many and therefore he was removed at first go, said another employee of the hospital.

When asked why no one looked into the dysfunctional life saving equipment in hospital despite Rs 6 crore fund lying unused, Dulara said, "I can't go into the past and quote reasons for why these funds were not used."

Will you be able to spend the fund which is being infused by NGOs, MLAs and MPs, he said that the hospital will use these funds for its betterment, however, there are certain government norms which need to be followed. "We are bound by the norms which are too many. These norms need to be simplified," he said further.

More than 110 kids died in Kota's JK hospital in 35 days due to hypothermia, a medical emergency that occurs when the body temperature falls below 95 degrees F (35 degrees C). The normal body temperature is 98.6 degrees F (37 degrees C).

A hospital official said there were many equipment which wanted just a small piece of wire costing around Rs 2 to start functioning, but there was no one to look into the issue as the heads of the concerned department were busy fulfilling their self seeking goals.

The war of commission simply delayed important and urgent tasks while the kids were dying.

None of the companies were assigned the task to fix the equipment which kept lying, unused.

Dulara said he can't say what went wrong earlier, however, he said he has signed comprehensive annual maintenance contract (CAMC) with firms under which the equipment will be fixed in every three months.

I have signed CAMC for warmers, ventilators, nebulisors, and pulometers and other equipment too due to which there should not be any further challenge of technical non-performance of these equipment, he said.

Source: IANS