By Siddhant Mohan, TwoCircles.net
In a rather controversial decision, the Institute of Medical Sciences (IMS) and Sir Sunderlal Hospital at Banaras Hindu University have postponed the pre-planned surgical operations at the hospital as well as trauma centre as an anesthesiology conference is supposed to be held for three consecutive days starting from October 27.
Sources at the university informed that the decision was taken ahead of State Minister at MHRD Satyapal Singh’s visit to the University for the conference.
The decision was taken by the Department of Anaesthesiology at IMS and a circular was issued by the same Department. It has also asked other departments to either hand-over the surgeries or postpone them. The hospital chose the later, informed sources.
BHU has suspended surgeries for October 27 and 28
More than 100 patients whose operations have been postponed belong to both non-serious to serious categories.The patients and their caretakers have alleged that they have not been given new dates for the surgeries.
According to the rules, not more than 50 percent employees of the hospital can go on leave at once, but it seems that BHU is willing to defy rules and lives of people for the visit of one minister.
Despite repeated attempts, TwoCircles.net was unable to contact Prof VK Shukla, director at IMS, BHU for the comments on the postponement of surgeries.
However, Dr Sanjeev Gupta, professor-in-charge at Trauma Centre said that operations at trauma centre will be performed as planned.
BHU hospital recently made to news after the official inquiry revealed that the hospital supplied industrial grade anaesthetic agent to the patients due to which 14 people lost their lives in surgery ward.
The gas supply tender was given to BJP’s MLA Harsh Bajpai’s firm based in Allahabad, who allegedly had good norms with BHU VC GC Tripathi.