Another Shame for Bihar

The medical community in Bihar should hang their heads in shame over how doctors at the Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH) delayed treatment to 10-year-old rape victim for hours together which led to her.

PMCH is being redeveloped. The government claims that with 5,462 beds it will become the world's second biggest hospital. But what needs most are doctors who show empathy with patients with exemplary care.

The patient was waiting in the ambulance, requiring an emergency care while the doctors were breaking heads over which department she should be admitted–

Gynaecology or ENT – leading to her death because the treatment reached her when the survival chances were bleak.

Why it happened? It was destined to happen as it happens with poor patients who throng the hospital with great hopes getting cured and returning to their villages with smiles on their faces. 

The tragic incident exposed that the hospital lacks the infrastructure, logistics, the required medical staff, and to top it all, doctors who feel for the patients.

It was sheer criminal negligence which requires prosecution of the doctors attending to her.

Last year’s CAG report said that the PMCH departments faced shortage of equipment from 33 percent to 94 percent.

About 33 percent of the staff posts were found vacant at Bihar's best government hospital. It has outsourced its registration to private parties. Various other services are also outsourced to private entities.

She had been brought to Patna from a Muzaffarpur hospital where she was admitted to after being sexually assaulted and her throat being cut by the rapist. She was found lying on the roadside.

Instead of admitting her to the ENT department to treat her cut in the throat, she was taken to the gynaecology department as the ENT department did have an ICU.

But the question is: despite the doctors knowing that she needed emergency care and the ENT department did not have an ICU, why did they delay her treatment on where to admit and treat her?

Doctors first duty is to save lives, keeping aside the formalities. When they were in the know that the ENT did not have an ICU, they should have immediately started attending to her to save her life.

It shows the insensitivity in the part of doctors bordering on criminal negligence.

It has sent a message across the country and the world that when Bihar cannot provide care to its citizens in emergencies, how can they assure investors who want to invest in the state over their concerns on several important aspects.

Callousness and corruption stalk Bihar. Government medical facilities are so woefully pathetic that private doctors enjoy a field day round the year.

People have a very high opinion about doctors at the government hospitals but they fear to enter them for treatment due to overcrowding and the time they take to wrap up the treatment.

People travelling to Patna from far away places in the state straightway go to private doctors who, though charge hefty fees and have patients go for several tests emptying their pickets and raising questions on their requirement, concludes the treatment in one or two days.

 The same process takes weeks or months at the government hospitals.

Coming back to the health infrastructure in the state, it cannot be exaggeration to say that it is in limbo. The CAG report placed before the Assembly last year lifted the lid over the shambles that the infrastructure is in.

It said that there were no emergency operation theatres in any of the subdivisional hospitals audited, including in Patna.

Only half of the ventilators were in working conditions. Forty three percent of them were lying disused because the technicians were not available or the ICUs were defunct.

Patna has less than fifty percent of doctors it requires. The doctor-people ratio is one doctor for 11,500 people.

In the backward Araria district, there is only one doctor for more than 56,000 people.

Patna has 18 percent shortage of nurse staff, while Purnia 72 percent. Shortage of paramedics is 40 percent in Jamui and 90 percent in East Champaran.

Though it has no relation with the tragic incident, it shows how much Bihar cares for the female population. The state has recorded the lowest sex ratio– reporting just 891 girls born for every 1,000 boys– at birth among all States and Union Territories during 2022.

These figures figure in the Civil Registration System vital statistics report released by the General of India. Bihar has become the only state which has seen it sex ratio at birth declining consistently since 2020. In 2020, the state reported the sex ratio of 964, in 2021, 908 and in 2022, 891.