On a devastating fire swept through a private hospital in Kolkata in the early hours of Friday the 9th December,2011 killing more than 90 people, mostly patients, and raising questions about lack of regulation and possible cutting of corners in pursuit of profit in India's rapidly growing private healthcare sector. The West Bengal government reacted swiftly, canceling the licence of the hospital, known as AMRI, and ordering a police investigation.
Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee rushed to the spot early in the day and stayed on for many hours to personally organize rescue operations. The hospital is located in Dhakuria in South Kolkata.
The high death toll makes it possibly the worst disaster involving an accident in a hospital in India. The fire appears to have started in the basement of the hospital in the early hours of Friday. Toxic fumes from the blaze soon spread to other floors, trapping the patients, many of them critical.
The tragedy unfolded over many hours as patients suffocated to death.
Not a single individual (doctor, nurse or staff) felt a personal responsibility for the patient who died in this accident. This is unprecedented and catastrophic. It is witnessing nothing less than the dismantling of the Hippocratic oath -- the loss of the one-to-one patient-doctor relationship. Hospitals are in survival mode. Business practices are destroying our medical system; volume is now necessary in order to pay the bills. At all hospitals, patients are referred to as customers.
AMRI is controlled by EMAMI group which also have several medicines selling retail outlets named FRANKROSS all over West Bengal, as well as other big cities. More interestingly one of the renowned physician Dr. Mani Chetri is the Managing Director of this hospital along with other director a renowned gynecologist Dr. Pranab Dasgupta.
Dr. Mani Chetri was Late Jyoti Basu's (CPM governed ex Chief Minister of West Bengal) personal physician and was very close to Mr. SK Todi and Mr. RS Agarwal of the Emami group. Dr. Mani Chetri is 90 years old and still he daily travels more than 100 kilometers to visit six nursing homes and hospitals in and around the city, but for what? So far it reveals not for any charitable work but for only to earn money. In this context it strikes to me of a great doctor Matthew Warpick. He can only be compared with Dr. Bidhan Chandra Ray.
Some doctors would rather first look at the purse, but Matthew Warwick is the kind of physician who lives by the Hippocratic Oath. He went one step further and swore allegiance to an entire neighborhood, staying put for 67 years in the same five-room doctor's office in West Harlem, despite the break-ins and muggings that became frighteningly frequent.
The 93-year-old doctor refused to retire, and vowed to his patients he would never desert them. Long before the phrase took root in the national psyche, he had worked out his own form of universal coverage: pay what you can.
He healed. He counseled. He listened.
http://www.eslarrenterprise.co.in/blog
Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee rushed to the spot early in the day and stayed on for many hours to personally organize rescue operations. The hospital is located in Dhakuria in South Kolkata.
The high death toll makes it possibly the worst disaster involving an accident in a hospital in India. The fire appears to have started in the basement of the hospital in the early hours of Friday. Toxic fumes from the blaze soon spread to other floors, trapping the patients, many of them critical.
The tragedy unfolded over many hours as patients suffocated to death.
Not a single individual (doctor, nurse or staff) felt a personal responsibility for the patient who died in this accident. This is unprecedented and catastrophic. It is witnessing nothing less than the dismantling of the Hippocratic oath -- the loss of the one-to-one patient-doctor relationship. Hospitals are in survival mode. Business practices are destroying our medical system; volume is now necessary in order to pay the bills. At all hospitals, patients are referred to as customers.
AMRI is controlled by EMAMI group which also have several medicines selling retail outlets named FRANKROSS all over West Bengal, as well as other big cities. More interestingly one of the renowned physician Dr. Mani Chetri is the Managing Director of this hospital along with other director a renowned gynecologist Dr. Pranab Dasgupta.
Dr. Mani Chetri was Late Jyoti Basu's (CPM governed ex Chief Minister of West Bengal) personal physician and was very close to Mr. SK Todi and Mr. RS Agarwal of the Emami group. Dr. Mani Chetri is 90 years old and still he daily travels more than 100 kilometers to visit six nursing homes and hospitals in and around the city, but for what? So far it reveals not for any charitable work but for only to earn money. In this context it strikes to me of a great doctor Matthew Warpick. He can only be compared with Dr. Bidhan Chandra Ray.
Some doctors would rather first look at the purse, but Matthew Warwick is the kind of physician who lives by the Hippocratic Oath. He went one step further and swore allegiance to an entire neighborhood, staying put for 67 years in the same five-room doctor's office in West Harlem, despite the break-ins and muggings that became frighteningly frequent.
The 93-year-old doctor refused to retire, and vowed to his patients he would never desert them. Long before the phrase took root in the national psyche, he had worked out his own form of universal coverage: pay what you can.
He healed. He counseled. He listened.
http://www.eslarrenterprise.co.in/blog