Reality bites at rat-bite hospital

The rodent that bit cancer patient Abha Adhikary’s finger at Calcutta Medical College and Hospital on Tuesday may have won the rat race to bed number 34 by taking the best shortcut: a round drainage cavity right next to her cot.

Green Building, the medical college block that houses four departments and as many operating theatres, is everything that a hospital shouldn’t be. The relatively clean green-and-white façade with rows of air-conditioners sticking out of the windows hides squalor and stench that would shame a slum.

Used surgical gloves, stacks of rubbish, including leftovers were strewn on the stairs, corridors and the basement during a walk through the wards on Wednesday.

For the rodents — and there are hundreds of them, as deputy superintendent Harekrishna Chanda admitted on Tuesday — the heaps of waste all over make the hospital a happy hunting ground where critically ill patients like 50-year-old Abha are sometimes the targets.

“Garbage is dumped here round the clock. How can you expect us to keep the hospital clean when people don’t care for cleanliness?” argued a Group D employee, pointing to the mound of rotting waste in a five-foot wide trench in the basement.

Abha, who was administered her second cycle of chemotherapy on Wednesday, was sleeping on a bedspread with bloodstains on it.

“I couldn’t sleep properly last night after what had happened in the morning,” Abha said eyeing the round hole on the floor that is large enough for two fat rats to crawl out together.

A nurse on duty in the second-floor ward claimed she and her colleagues had complained to the authorities about the uncovered drainage outlet but received no response.

“The radiotherapy ward was shifted here in January after the authorities decided to repair the David Hare ward. We have been told we would go back there but nobody knows when. This block is among the dirtiest,” the nurse added.

Another patient in the ward was bitten by a rodent the night before, as mentioned by a doctor on duty in a footnote to the written complaint filed by Abha’s son Narendranath.

Narendranath, who sold his one bigha and eight-cottah plot at Birashimul village in Bankura to raise Rs 80,000 for his mother’s treatment in Calcutta, was made to run from one official to the other the entire day to lodge the complaint.

“I am glad they are discharging my mother on Thursday. Hopefully, we will see some changes in the hospital when we come for the next chemotherapy cycle,” said Narendranath, who runs an electrical goods shop in Bankura.

Narendranath’s sister Archana, 35, was with Abha when she underwent her first cycle of chemotherapy in the second week of August. She did not want to come this time because some of the nurses had misbehaved with her, Abha said.

Kamar Kanti Mal, the assistant superintendent of the hospital, claimed to have ordered “necessary action” immediately after hearing about the rat-bite incident.

The rodent control agency contracted to the hospital, however, didn’t send a team until over 24 hours later.

Mal, who is also in charge of maintenance, said he would “take stock of the situation and do the needful”.

The Green Building houses the gastroenterology, radiotherapy, neurology and paediatric wards on different floors. The four operating theatres are on the fourth floor.


Rith Basu, The Telegraph Metro