Medical students of Calcutta National medical College (CNMC) are accusing their own institution of negligence after one of their classmates died without proper treatment, after a bike accident.

Around 1 a.m on Monday morning, final year student Ritesh Jaiswal was riding a motorcycle when it skidded. When his friends found him, Jaiswal was injured but conscious. His friends managed to stop a passing car and he was rushed to the hospital within 10 minutes, even though there were well known private hospitals within the same distance.

Ritesh was admitted into CNMC around 1.20 a.m and died seven hours later!

His friends brought him to the medical college hoping he would get the best care but they couldn’t even get a trolley for him. However, what followed at the emergency was even more shocking. The PG trainee on emergency duty was drunk and didn’t bother checking Ritesh’s BP or pulse which are the preliminary examinations that should be carried out. His friends were asked to take Ritesh to the operation theatre to stitch a cut, he suffered durin the accident on his left groin. The OT was on the second floor but the hospital authorities said they couldn’t find a stretcher to take him to the second floor OT. As they got the stretcher, 15 minutes were lost even as Ritesh lay in a pool of his own blood, groaning in pain!

His friend Preeti says,”Ritesh was wearing a helmet when he crashed but we kept insisting that a CT scan be taken. The doctor in the emergency said that everything was alright after looking into an X-ray report. No blood was transfused despite knowing that he had lost much blood,” After the cuts were stitched, Ritesh was admitted to the general ward. He died around 8am on Monday with no doctor near him. Ritesh had come to Kolkata for his MBBS after passing out of Army School in Ranchi. His final year exams were due in January. His body was cremated on Monday evening after an autopsy was conducted.

Another friend Rahul Badhani, who brought Ritesh to the hospital demands answers, “The only external injury Ritesh had suffered was a laceration near his left groin. How can a 22-year-old die from such a wound? If there was an internal injury why weren’t examinations conducted to identify and treat it? A senior doctor could have been consulted or we could have been called if Ritesh’s condition was critical. We could have been told to take him to a better hospital. If this is not negligence, what is,”

The students are now protesting that the basic examinations to check for internal bleeding and brain damage weren’t conducted on Ritesh. They are also demanding a probe and punishment to the doctors involved in his treatment. The hospital has started an investigation after the students gheraoed principal Manjushree Ray’s office on Tuesday, demanding a probe and punishment to the doctors involved in his treatment.The agitation was lifted after about one and half hours when the principal assured an inquiry into the complaint of negligence.

“I heard about the student’s death around 9.20am on Monday. Even before the students sat on agitation I was holding a discussion with hospital officials to see if steps taken to treat Ritesh were proper. Now an inquiry committee will probe if there was any lacuna on the part of doctors,” said Ray. The committee is chaired by Ray and has one doctor each from the departments of neurology, general surgery, medicine, orthopaedics and anaesthesia. The panel hopes to file a report by Saturday.

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Original Post – Times of India

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