A video in which two employees of a government-run hospital, both ward boys, were shown treating patients in Uttar Pradesh has caused an uproar with the state’s health minister saying that a probe will be ordered into the incident.
The undated video shows a hospital employee stitching a child’s wound while another employee administered an injection. The video was shot in a hospital in the Bulandshahar district of Uttar Pradesh which reportedly has 23 doctors present.
Screen grab of video showing a ward boy treating the patient from CNN-IBN.
After an uproar over the video, Chief Medical Officer SHS Danu said, “Sometimes there is a situation when there is nobody to attend to patients, so they sometimes help with the distribution of medicines. I don’t know whether sweepers give stitches to patients.”
The state’s health minister Ahmed Hasan has said that a probe will be ordered into the incident.
However, the medical superintendent of the hospital bizarrely justified the fact that it was not a trained nurse or doctor who was treating the patient, saying that it was not a surgery but a basic treatment that was being provided and was carried out under his supervision.
Not denying the fact that it was a ward boy conducting the medical procedure, Shishir Kumar told Times Now, “I was also there. they were doing it under supervision. The ward boy was doing it and I was supervising him.”
He said the patient was a victim of an accident and when emergency cases were rushed in, the ward boys who were also trained in treatment were called in to assist the doctors.
The medical superintendent said that he was also present in the room at the time, adding that the ward boy had been trained to perform such tasks and he was supervising the procedure throughout.
When asked if it could send a wrong signal to people, Kumar said, “It may send a wrong signal but in emergency situations we have to work as a unit. If you follow up in the case of the patient in the video, you can see that very good repair (sic) has been done.”
He denied that the medical staff in the hospital was absent at the time of the incident and said all available staff had been present in the hospital when the patient was brought in. He said the orthopedic surgeon and other surgeon were also present.
“The full staff will be present for any task and will do everything possible to save the patient. He (the ward boy) had only done stitching work and bandaging, not surgery,” the medical superintendent told the channel.
