A 25-year-old man from Jammu and Kashmir's Handwara region, suffering from late-stage cancer, was left without stitches after doctors at Srinagar's Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital asked him to go home post-surgery.
According to his family members, they took him home for two days but soon his intestines became visible and they rushed back to the hospital.
"However, even then the doctors said that there are more critical patients in the emergency departments who need to be operated and the patient with open stitches can wait," the family member claims in a shocking video that has gone viral.
The video also shows a doctor entering into a scuffle with the relatives of the patient who said they were pleading to them to stitch up his wounds.
When the gross negligence of the hospital administration came to the fore, the management released a statement saying that the patient suffered from Stage 4 adenocarcinoma and had also developed wound intestinal infection.
"The patient was operated earlier but soon he developed wound infection, for which stitches were advised daily and the family was urged to stay close by to the hospital. Since the patient was already terminally ill, suffering from kidney malfunctioning he could not be immediately taken for the second consecutive surgery and was asked to wait," the hospital authorities said.
The management further said that around the same time more critical patients needed to be treated at the emergency ward and this patient was subsequently operated next morning."
The family members, however, allege that the doctors told them to leave along with the patient who had developed the serious wound infection and bring him the next day.
"How could we have dealt with such seriously ill patient at home? How could doctors discharge him when he was supposed to be operated," the family members asked.
Watch the shocking video here:
The inadequate public health infrastructure in J&K has often led the patients to suffer as a majority of the tertiary care hospitals deal with a huge rush of patients. In Kashmir, there are only two major government hospitals which receive patients from every nook and corner of the valley.
Despite the successive governments claiming to expand the health facilities to the rural areas, little has been achieved so far.
