So going beyond the call of duty finally caught up with Ayub, the ward boy who applied stitches and Dr Shishir Kumar, the CMS as they were both suspended. Things took a nasty turn after Bulandshahr hospital staff protested the decision by going on strike resulting the death of a man who was allegedly suffering from typhoid and didn’t receive treatment.
There have been various other cases from across the state and a similar one in West Bengal as well. Rajkumar, a sweeper frequently assists doctors with stitches and injections at Ballia hospital. Meanwhile the district hospital in Kushinagar saw the Chief Medical Officer’s driver, a man named Rajendra treating patients in emergency and general wards. The CMO claimed ignorance and promised a probe. In Meerut, a ward boy was caught on camera carrying out a post-mortem in a government hospital. The state health minister insisted that docs were always present during all post-mortems.
A lot of hue and cry has been raised about the hospital’s chief superintendent’s admission that the ward boys were trained in the Bulandshahr case. Is it really justified?
India.com Health View
While the outrage across the country’s understandable, there’s a need to look at the bigger picture. The state health minister’s move of suspending the CMS and the ward boy is a prime example of how authorities fail to act unless the media makes a lot of hue and cry about a situation.
UP’s and in fact the whole country’s healthcare sector is in shambles and hospitals are horribly understaffed. We are not condoning these incidents in anyway, but it does reveal the deep scarcity of resources in our hospitals around the country. Waiting for a doctor or paramedic (assuming there was one around) could’ve resulted in the deaths or other complications. If our health minister Mr Azad can’t convince our doctors to go for three year rural services, it’s heartening to know there’s someone waiting in the wings. Perhaps the CMS should be lauded for at least having a plan of action rather than throwing up his arms and complaining about it.
And we don’t know about you but we’d rather get our wounds stitched by a ward boy who picked it up on the job than say a doctor who got into medical school because he could either afford the humongous donation fees or hailed from a particular community.
So what do you think India.com Health readers? Do write in and let us know your views.
I am postgraduate doctor from UP and now settled in UK. I am deeply ashamed by the class conciousness and aristocratic mentality of the readers and media. All of you think that sweeper is something below human and does not possess any skills -you can’t be more wrong. learning how to stich a wound is not rocket science and any human being can learn that. This great person (who is sweeper by occupation in that hospital) have learned this skill in much the same way as a medical student would have. Grow up Indians and give all professions equal respect. In essence, all doctors are sweepers, they clean wounds of debris, pus and make it look good.
yes, this will keep happening when the “So called Chief Minister AK YADAV” would have his MLA’s buying CARS and Trucks but not doing anythig for the Hospitals … Good Job AK ..
Who is to blame for this situation -ward boy/driver/sweeper who have stiched the wound/gave injection in the hospital. In my opinion they should be rewarded instead of sacking from the service. This hue and cry about the situation is being engineered by influential DOCTORs lobby.because if these people continue with the stiching the wound and giving injection then they will be expert after some time and people will prefer to go to the ward boy instead of so called professional doctors. This way the doctors will loose their importance. Instead of making hue and cry please go to a remote village in any state and you will find the stitches/allopthic medicines are being given by person who has no link with the medical science.and people are being cured. This is INDIA. Then why punish that poor ward boy ! He should be given REWARDS
Seems you should try to get treated here after fully knowing your post operative care is being done by uneducated , infected sweepers , cleaners ..
Hardly nay difference. Doctors are from quota and ward boy doing their job. When system is like this.
UP need more hospitals and staff with full surety of 24 hrs electric supply. Power generation is top of all even roads and others goes later.
That is why all UP walas come to Mumbai for treatment & living.
still we survive .So why this hesitation to admit our land is being looked after by Bharat mata .jai ho! If its not been so then how babas ,matas ,gurus, chamtkaris getting stinking rich in a few yrs of opening of their shops and despite so many scandals the flow of their adherents has been on ascending order ,means they are getting rid of their ailments to their hearts’ content.Don’t get panic my fellow-countrymen/women ;Indian species is altogether a different one ,an unique .
in my view it is better to give some first aid rather patients are neglected by anyone.
again, if you go in depth you will find that it is due to poor administration system and
non availability of doctors for poor village hospitals.
Dear Kaushik, T
he ward boy was not doing surgery. He was doing stitching and dressing. These are externally visible and can easily be supervised by the doctor. I will not have issues if I am giving injections, stitches or dressing from trained ward boys or nurses. Let’s not be paranoid and enter into lynch mentality. This CMS would have been working under situation where you would probably not even stay for an hour. And yet he saves several lives every month using whatever he has. If I get lynched like him, I will sure believer it better to run away.
Regards,
Kundan
@kundan: you are so right , under the able supervision of doctors these uneducated , infected guys can also be made to do simple operations, then when they become experts in that , they can be promoted to do other complex operations ..after all whats the big deal about operations , just cut some nerves , organs & stitch it up.. i dont understand why india is wasting crores of money in medical colleges , just learn like the sweepers & drivers
Agree with you 100% In fact delegation of suitable task is very part of a work culture.
This is absolute crap that you are trying to perpetuate. If your son would have been there you would not have taken this stance. Though I do not support the ward boy’s suspension but the CMS should be absolutely suspended as he has not been able to manage the show ably and the way it should be handled. The big pic is grim but supporting these kind of activities will make it grimmer.
there should be more hospitals with better infrastructure, which our politicians never support. what else do you expect from understaffed hospitals and overworked doctors? a doctor in a govt emergency attends to roughly 10 cases in an hour, with frequent night duties. whenever doctors go on strike, media tries to dilute it by publishing articles about suffering patients. anyhow, you should better complain to authorities rather than employees.