Superintendent accused of playing with lives

Dharan, June 16:

An internecine war has broken out in BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences here after ENT department head Dr Sangeeta Bhandari, who blacklisted six pharmaceuticals for allegedly not cooperating with her department’s educational programmes, furnished a militant reply to the show cause notice issued to her by the hospital authorities.

Dr Bhandari today put up another notice in her department accusing hospital superintendent Dr BP Das of toying with the patients’ lives by prescribing medicines stronger than necessary.

In her notice, she also pointed out that while 10 milligrams of Xylocain were required per patient, the hospital administration was prescribing 15 milligrams, adding that such experiments were likely to endanger the patients’ lives.

Dr Bhandari has sent copies of her notice to the consumers’ forum and members of the

civil society. In her notice, she says that her repeated requests to Dr Das to arrange for the required medicines had fallen on deaf ears and added that if anything happened to any patient Dr Das should be held responsible.

“The hospital superintendent is guilty, but it is us doctors who will have to face the music if anything goes wrong. I was forced to highlight this issue,” she said.

Meanwhile, Dr Das said the public notice against him was meaningless.

He added that India had stopped producing the 10-milligram Xylocain, and only 15-milligram Xylocain was available for the last one-and-a-half years.