Like most mothers, Rezwana Parveen, 60, was excited for her daughter’s wedding later this year. In preparation, she decided to get cataract surgery in her right eye at Kolkata’s Garden Reach State General Hospital (GRSGH) in July.
Parveen made the journey from Asansol, about 200 kilometres from Kolkata at GRSGH, on Friday, June 28. “The next day I could not see anything. So, I went back to the hospital, and the doctors gave me eye drops and sent me home,” she says, perched on Bed 185 in the dilapidated female ward of the Regional Institute of Ophthalmology (RIO) about a week after her cataract surgery.
“The day after, the doctors at GRSGH called us in a panic and asked us to come to Kolkata’s Medical College immediately,” she recalled, as her daughters prepped her for discharge. “They said my eye had been infected.”
As per hospital estimates, Parveen is one of at least 20 who had undergone cataract surgery at the West Bengal government-run GRSGH between June 26 and June 29 this year, who were left partially or completely blind in the operated eye, after alleged post-surgical infections.
Between these days, 40 people had surgeries, a GRSGH doctor says. The Medical Superintendent of GRSGH, Koushik Ray, confirmed that the hospital authorities had contacted all the patients after they detected an infection in one of them during their first post-surgical follow-up. “Eventually, infections were detected in 20 patients, and for further treatment, they were sent to RIO, the eye department in Medical College, Kolkata,” he says.
On the day of her discharge, Parveen was bereft. “They are sending me home, but I still cannot see anything. The doctors here told me that I might never be able to see with this eye,” she said. By then she had undergone three more procedures in her affected eye at RIO.
“I opted for this surgery to better my life, but it made everything worse. I wish I had never done it,” she says, a tear trickling down from behind her dark glasses. A patient on the bed opposite says, “Don’t cry, your eye will get worse.”
GRSGH was founded in 1997, first with OPD, and then with in-patient facilities starting in 2000. “It took a prolonged citizen movement and repeated negotiations with then Chief Minister Jyoti Basu for the hospital to be built here,” says Kushal Debnath, 65, who founded the social welfare organisation Garden Reach Nagarik Parishad in 1984. He was at the centre of the movement that demanded a State-run hospital in here to cater to over 30 lakh people residing in the three Assembly constituencies in the area: Kolkata Port, Maheshtala, and Metiabruz. The area is densely populated with narrow roads, overflowing drains, and a crumbling infrastructure.
Livelihoods lost
Over a month later, Parveen has settled down in her daughter in-law’s two-room house in Kolkata’s Metiabruz. There is no one to look after her in Asansol. “I see no light,” she says. “I cannot do anything by myself anymore. I need help eating and moving around. When I close my eyes, I cannot sleep.”
Rezwana Parveen, at her daughter-in-law’s house in Kolkata. | Photo Credit: DEBASISH BHADURI
Her younger daughter, Sahana Afreen, 26, who is set to get married in December this year, is upset. “How can I be excited for my wedding when my mother is in such pain?” she says. Her wedding fund has been rapidly depleting due to her mother’s continuing eye ailment. “My brother was training to be a welder. He took a break to look after my mother, and now he lost his job,” Afreen says. “We were poor, but this crisis has made us poorer in a hundred different ways.”
Metiabruz, where most of the survivors hail from, is a densely populated neighbourhood in the southwestern fringes of Kolkata, near the Hooghly river. Home to the exiled last nawab of Awadh, Wajid Ali Shah, in the mid- 1800s, the area is a ‘miniature Lucknow’. Now it is predominantly inhabited by tailors, labourers, and traders with small businesses.
The West Bengal government website says Metiabruz is India’s largest garment cluster, with nearly 5 lakh workers here and in the surrounding areas engaged in garment manufacturing.
For many victims, post-surgical vision loss means a complete loss of livelihood. “We have received no compensation for what we lost. I used to work as a tailor. Now I cannot do anything,” says Rafik Mondal, 60. Now, he can only see a beam of light in his left eye.
In the living room of their house in the far interiors of Metiabruz, Mondal’s tailoring machine and incomplete garment orders lay abandoned.
“Both of us used to earn around ₹3,000 each as tailors every week. Now our family income has halved because my father cannot work,” his older son says. He adds that his father’s treatment at RIO cost ₹8,000 including medicines, food, and travel. “We bought all the medicines ourselves, including one injection that cost ₹3,500. The administration provided nothing,” he says.
Left in the lurch
Salim Sheikh, in his 50s, would size and cut threads for a living. The cumulative cost of treatment at RIO got so heavy that he discharged himself prematurely. He could not afford the medicines anymore. “My work fetched me ₹1,500 a week. With medicines, food, and my family’s travel expenses to and from Medical College, Kolkata, I spent ₹6,000 in just a few days,” Sheikh says.
His daughter Suraiya Bibi is upset at many things: her father’s condition, the expense despite it being a government hospital, and a future without a livelihood.
Salim Sheikh and his daughter Suraiya Bibi at the male eye ward in the Regional Institute of Ophthalmology at Medical College, Kolkata. | Photo Credit: DEBASISH BHADURI
Two weeks later, Sheikh was left languishing without work in the confines of a double-roomed thatched house in the semi-rural interiors of Metiabruz. “The medication that I am on now is mostly to suppress the pain in my eye. But I only see darkness, and I don’t see much hope of my vision coming back,” he says.
Mohammed Iqbal, also in his 50s, who lost 90% vision in his operated eye, earned ₹15,000 a month from selling mobile phones at Khidirpur’s Fancy Market. “I have been bedridden and unemployed for the last three months. I have two unmarried daughters, a 10-year-old son, and an old ailing mother to provide for,” he says. His bedridden mother’s medication costs ₹850 a month. “Now my own medicines cost me over ₹5,000 a month,” he says.
Iqbal’s household had been running on a ₹50,000 loan from his employer when the tragedy unfolded. He now spends his days sequestered in a dark bedroom in his house, wondering what his future, and that of his family’s, holds.
“Everyone knows me as Biryani Rahman or Rahman Bawarchi,” says Abdul Rahman, 61, his black goggles sitting above his unkempt moustache. Since he was 14, Rahman has been a cook in Garden Reach’s Clocktower area. “Locals and senior police officers in the city used to visit and place orders with me.”
Since his post-surgical eye infection, he has been unable to stand close to a fire. “The doctors have said exposure to fire will hurt the affected eye. That has taken a massive toll on his work and income,” says his brother and primary caregiver Abdur Rahim. “After news spread that he is suffering from an eye infection, people have also stopped placing orders with him.”
Fallout on ground
Dr. Anu Singh, who heads the eye department at GRSGH, claims that after being discharged from RIO, all patients have vision in the range of 1 foot to 4 feet in the affected eye. “Further recovery will vary in individual patients depending on the presence of comorbidity [diabetes, for instance] and can take months,” she says.
In the weeks following the revelation of the infection cluster, the eye department at the GRSGH bore a deserted look. Operation theatres and eye wards were locked, with only cleaning staff going in from time to time.
“The OPD (outpatient department) is running regularly as usual. The OT (operation theatre) will start after permission from higher authorities following all protocols post-infection,” Dr. Singh says. Even after a month, the OPD, usually bustling with up to 300 patients, had a tense silence, populated with about 150 people.
Meanwhile, the ripples of this mishap have travelled across Metiabruz and nearby areas. “People coming to our weekly eye camp say they prefer the doctors here than at GRSGH,” says Md. Zahid Uddin Haldar, a social worker at Akra Kabi Nazrul Smriti Welfare Society, a non-profit which conducts weekly medical camps for locals in Garden Reach’s Akra.
A 40-year-old tailor, who was undergoing eye treatment at GRSGH before the infection cluster was revealed, now consults the ophthalmologist at the Nazrul Smriti Society eye camp. “Initially I was seeking treatment at GRSGH, but since the mishap, I am scared of going there again,” he says, waiting for his turn at the camp.
Rafik Mondal’s sewing machine and incomplete tailoring orders lie abandoned after post-surgical infection. | Photo Credit: MOYURIE SOM
After the allegations came to light, Principal Secretary of the State Health Department, Narayan Swaroop Nigam said that the GRSGH is reputed for its ophthalmology department. “Medicines used in the surgeries were sent for examination, and a team is investigating the matter,” he added.
According to a senior ophthalmologist from West Bengal’s Nadia district who tracked the case, three major factors might lead to such infection clusters: poor cleanliness or bad airflow in the operation theatre, human error, and most commonly, contaminated consumables used in surgery. He explains that consumables like viscoelastic substances — a must in cataract surgery — are most prone to contamination because the onus to ensure sterile packaging lies entirely with the manufacturer.
“Even now the set-up at GRSGH is very patchy. There aren’t enough doctors round the clock, the nursing system is shoddy, and not every speciality is catered to here,” Kushal says.
He mentions the Metiabruz Super-Speciality Hospital, which was built as an annexe of the GRSGH a few years ago and houses the ophthalmology department where the surgeries took place. “The name says super-speciality hospital, but that’s not the reality at all,” he says.
Shafqat Rahim, a local activist and niece of patient Abdur Rahman, has decided to file a public interest litigation in the Calcutta High Court to ensure justice for the affected patients. “We want punishment for the culprits. They should be suspended, their medical licences should be cancelled, and their salaries stopped,” she says.
Adequate compensation and a high-level Criminal Investigation Department inquiry are also on her list of demands. “We vote them into power and they trample on us like this,” she says. “None of our leaders has cared even to visit the patients and see how they are.”
Published - September 15, 2024 06:37 pm IST
