12 children discharged, 3 still critical

Nine-year-old Abhinandu was discharged on Wednesday. Both the brothers were travelling in the ill-fated school bus, which collided with a train at Masaipet on Thursday, July 24.

School Bus-train collision: Abhinandu being discharged from Yashoda Hospital in Secunderabad on Wednesday. PHOTO: K. Ramesh Babu

It was a bittersweet moment for Shyamala, when Yashoda Hospital doctors decided to discharge her nine-year-old son Abhinandu on Wednesday. While she was happy that Abhinandu was discharged, part of her mind and heart was still lingering around the hospital’s critical ward where her six-year-old son Sharath, is fighting for life.

“I am glad but at the same time tense too. My second son is struggling but we have not given up on him,” she says with a shrug. Shyamala has decided to stay back in the hospital with Sharath and send her elder son Abhinandu with his father to her village.

Both the brothers were travelling in the ill-fated school bus, which collided with a train at Masaipet on Thursday, July 24. Apart from broken ribs and limbs, Sharath received severe head injuries and the neurosurgeons had to take up immediate corrective surgeries after his arrival at the hospital. The hospital doctors said Sharath was under ‘close observation’.

On Wednesday, the hospital doctors managed to convince the parents to take their wards to villages. “What’s the point in staying in a hospital environment and getting exposed to infections? Our doctors will visit the villages directly for follow-up check-ups of the discharged children,” said Medical Director, Yashoda Hospitals, A. Lingaiah.

In all, 12 children were discharged from the hospital, and will now get follow-up visits from Yashoda Hospital doctors. Medicines for the children, enough to last for over a week, have already been handed over to the parents, hospital doctors on Wednesday told press persons.

According to doctors, 11 major surgeries, mostly dealing with abdomen, chest, broken bones and head, were done on children after the Masaipet tragedy. “Within an hour of the accident, we had lined-up speciality doctors including paediatric surgeons, orthopaedic surgeons, anaesthetists, intensivists, paediatric cardiologists, CT and neurosurgeons. Based on the degree of injuries, the children were classified on the basis of triage. These doctors were trained to handle patients brought from disaster zones,” said COO R. Chandrasekhar.