A complaint made by the judge of Allahabad high court against poor availability of life saving drugs in Uttar Pradesh hospitals was to be taken up for hearing as a public interest litigation by the chief justice himself on Friday.
The complaint was made by Justice Sudhir Agarwal on account of the agony and disgust that he suffered due to non-availability of a life saving Hepatitis-B vaccine in any government or private hospital in Allahabad.
In his complaint to Chief Justice F I Rebello, the judge stated that he procured the vaccine for his daughter from Delhi.
After getting his daughter operated for multiple fractures at the state-run Swaroop Rani Nehru Hospital in Allahabad on April 9, the judge was informed of the grave danger she had been exposed to as two patients operated upon in the same operation theatre a day earlier, were affected by the Hepatitis B virus against which immunization of the girl was necessary. Subsequently, two more surgeries were carried out in the same operation theatre.
The surgeon also confessed to the judge that the hospital had neither cared to warn any of those four patients about the fact that they were suffering from Hepatitis-B, nor about the dangers of exposure to the deadly virus or the need for them to get immunized against it.
Justice Agarwal got further alarmed when he discovered that the operations theatre was neither sanitized nor was the usual immunization protocol observed before his daughter was operated upon there.
"As per the guidelines of World Health Organisation, patients suffering from Hepatitis B or from HIV needed to be either operated upon in complete isolation or it needed to be ensured that the operation theatre was completely sanitized before any other patient was operated upon there," the judge had pointed out.
Since the Hepatitis B was highly infectious and contagious, anyone operated upon in a theatre subsequent to surgery on a Hepatitis B affected patient, immediate vaccination against the virus was absolutely mandatory.
The judge sought to draw the chief justice's attention to the fact that while he managed to procure the expensive vaccine through his own resources from New Delhi, that may not be feasible for every other patient.
"I therefore request you to treat this letter as a PIL and to order necessary steps because other patients were not even aware of the dangers they were exposed to," Justice Agarwal was stated to have written in his letter.
"Any expeditious step in the matter shall provide a ray of hope to four poor helpless patients and many others who may be suffering for lack of resources or ignorance," the judge added.
