Minister suspends hospital in-charge

• Minister Kamineni rushes to the GGH as protests held
• Scoffs at dereliction by staff at the government hospital
• Parents of a boy told to take him to Guntur for anti-rabies vaccine
• Patients can’t be told to buy medicines from outside: Minister

Vijayawada: “It is misfortune that people refuse to change despite the government making all-out efforts to bring about improvement in the functioning of government hospitals.”

Thus remarked the Minister for Health, Kamineni Srinivas, here on Sunday when he found that the in-charge of the Government General Hospital (GGH) here was not present in the hospital and other doctors exhibited gross negligence of duty.

A seven year old boy who was badly bitten by street dogs on chest and thighs in Kabela Centre at Vidyadharapuram was brought to the GGH at 7.30 am on Sunday. The staff at the GGH made them wait for more than 30 minutes, without even giving him first aid. Later, the boy’s parents were asked to take him to the Government General Hospital in Guntur for treatment as the much-needed medicine (a Serum) was not in stock at the GGH.

The parents and relatives of the boy protested and as the news spread, the health minister Kamineni Srinivas, rushed to the hospital and asked the in charge doctor about the incident. The in-charge doctor failed to provide satisfactory reply to any question from the Minister and said that he did not know what injection was given to the boy. When the Minister saw the records and spoke to other staff, it came to light that anti-rabies injection was administered to the boy but the hospital did not have the serum and asked the parents to get it. This the in-charge doctor was not aware, the minister said.

Srinivas was also angry that the doctors had asked the parents to get the serum and even advised them to shift the patient to Guntur. Calling it as callous behavior, the Minister issued charge memo to the doctors and suspended Dr Chandrasekhar who was not present in the hospital, though he should have been on duty at that time. Following this action, the staff brought Immunoglobulin vaccine from a PHC near Machilipatnam and administered it to the boy.

The Minister later told the media that the government had released funds to all the government hospitals which were supposed to get necessary drugs in such cases of emergency from outside. They are not supposed to ask the patients to buy the medicine.