20 patients including 8 children died in the Kurnool Government General Hospital during a 12-hour blackout on Thursday.
Negligence at every level cost 20 lives at this government hospital that registers 10 deaths on an average every day. The Andhra Pradesh government has ordered an inquiry into the incident.
The power supply that snapped at 7 pm on Wednesday was not restored till Thursday morning. No senior duty doctors, including the Resident Medical Officer, was present at the hospital when patients were undergoing a harrowing time due to the outage.
20 patients including 8 children and 2 women, all poor patients, lost their lives during the outage. While an inquiry has been ordered, sources suggested that the outage was a result of Police Outpost staff drawing electricity illegally. The power is said to have snapped when the staff of the Police Outpost on hospital premises hooked electric cables to high tension wires to draw electricity illegally.
The hospital staff claimed that they had contacted linemen from the electricity board but none were available to set things right.
“We made frantic efforts to get the power fixed, but no lineman was available until morning. I managed to get in touch with a few linemen, but they refused to climb electric poles at night,” said Hospital Superintendent Dr. J Veeraswamy.
Soon after reports of the tragedy emerged the blame game began. Hospital authorities blamed the Police Outpost staff for the tragedy.
Andhra Pradesh Health Minister Kamineni Srinivas sought a report on the matter from the hospital. In the meanwhile, alternate arrangements are being made to ensure that the hospital does not face similar situations. An inquiry has also been ordered into the absence of the Resident Medical Officer.
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