It has been more than a year since R. Gajjalakshmi first came for treatment to Government Stanley Hospital, but so far, the kidney transplant surgery she’d been expecting to have has not taken place.
The 27-year-old was one of 16 patients to whom an interim compensation of Rs. 3 lakh is to be paid, after they contracted Hepatitis C through dialysis machines at the hospital and were diagnosed last August. The patients had all been awaiting kidney transplants when they were diagnosed, and it was only after first being asked to go elsewhere, were they given dialysis at the hospital with three separate machines.
For most of the 14 patients (two have since died) and their families, life has been at a standstill for over 10 months. “We have not been able to go to work and those of us who had small businesses have had to shut shop. Several of us are not from Chennai and we have had to either depend on friends or relatives or stay at the hospital. With no income, constant trips to the hospital for dialysis and treatment and living costs, we are all in a terrible way, financially,” said Thilagavathy, the wife of R. Karthikeyan, another patient.
The compensation, the patients said, gives them no great satisfaction – treatment that was originally supposed to be completed in two or three months has dragged on for much longer and is still not complete.
Karthikeyan, along with two others, the patients said, is on his second course of interferon, a drug used to treat Hepatitis C, on which all patients had been put. “We were scheduled for transplants, but doctors told us our viral load had increased even after the first course, and so, we have more injections to get through and the transplants have been postponed yet again,” he said. Others have had other complications. A hospital doctor said some patients had been put on a second course of interferon.
After complaints were made to hospital dean Isaac Christian Moses that the hospital was not being transparent, typed reports were handed over to the patients on Friday. “But these reports do not have any details – of the lab where the tests were done or any other details. We want the original reports,” V. Raju, Gajalakshmi’s husband, said.
Dr. Moses said the doctors regularly had meetings with patients where they were updated on their treatment and all information was given to them. A senior Health Department official said the compensation would be given within a week, and the recommendation of an increased amount for the families of the two patients who died, would be considered. The recommendations of the expert committee that looked into this issue will be put up onwww.tnhealth.org,” he said.
The promised transplant surgeries at Stanley hospital are yet to materialise
