After attack, RG Kar emergency ward works from trauma centre
Times of India | 17 August 2024
Kolkata: The mob vandalism at the emergency unit of the R G Kar Medical College has prompted the hospital administration to start emergency services from the ground floor of the trauma care building. Equipment, monitors, medicine supply and other supporting amenities have been set up newly to keep up emergency services.
The vandalism that went uninterrupted for close to 40 minutes in the intervening night between Wednesday and Thursday has left the emergency unit in tatters.In addition to damage to hospital property worth a few crores, it had posed a threat to emergency patient care.
“We are yet to evaluate the amount of damage. Our first priority was to set up an emergency unit immediately. Now the service is being run from the trauma care building,” said a hospital administrator.
A state-of-art laboratory, 12 hybrid critical care unit beds, nine HDU beds, ventilators, emergency medical store rooms, oxygen kiosks, patient monitoring devices like cardiopulmonary resuscitation machines and ECG devices, CT scan and X-ray machines have been damaged. All the LAN networking systems, telephone networks and even CCTVs were vandalized. The mob did not even spare police barracks and nurse’s changing room.
“Saline bottles, expensive medications, including that for heart patients, anti-venom injections were destroyed,” said a pharmacy unit staff member.
TOI on Friday visited the emergency building that houses various departments on floors above the emergency unit. The mob had also rushed up till the second floor. While most departments were found comparatively less crowded as patient inflow has dipped, senior doctors are giving patient services.
“Despite the protest and junior doctors staying away from work, senior doctors are tending to my husband, who is getting dialysis,” said the wife of a former R G Kar employee, who is being treated now.
Sources said the mob also tried to reach respiratory medicine department and seminar hall where the 31-year-old PGT doctor was found dead.