Nirbhaya shifted in her interests or govt interests?

Rema Nagarajan
28 December 2012, 02:55 PM IST

The shifting of the 23-year-old rape survivor to a Singapore hospital has raised innumerable questions about government intentions rather than reassuring the public of the government's 'best intentions'.

If most doctors including those treating a patient say that there can be no transplant or surgery for the patient for weeks, what is the logic of shifting that patient to a multi organ transplant specialty hospital? When the patient is in no condition to undergo a single organ transplant, or any surgery, what is the hype about a multi-organ transplant facility?

It is reported that Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde took the decision about involving and consulting the private hospital Medanta. Should the Home Minister be taking this decision or should the treating doctors be taking a medical decision? Or, was the Home Minister taking the decision because it was more about law and order implication and not about the medical/health implication of the decision?

All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), hailed as India's premier institute is where even the Prime Minister is treated. It's specialised trauma care centre, Jai Prakash Narayan Apex Trauma Center claims to be a state-of-the-art center "setting benchmarks in patient care not only nationally, but also internationally", claims its website.

In India, there are also several other such specialised trauma centres and even multiple organ transplant centres in the private sector which claim to attract patients from abroad because they are among the best in the world. Are we to now believe that all those centres are lying? Maybe they are not really the best? Maybe, India does not have any centres of excellence when it comes to trauma care or multiple organ transplant.

Dr Samiran Nundy of Ganga Ram Hospital who has successfully done an intestinal transplant also told the media that it would take weeks to even look into the possibility of an intestinal transplant. He minced no words saying that he was puzzled by the hurry to take a critically ill patient in such a serious condition out of a facility which was working so well and added that it seemed more a political move.

Even more curious, doctors in Safdarjung Hospital who have been treating the patient from day one were not allowed to accompany the patient, barring one, the ICU in-charge Dr P K Verma. The other doctors were all from Medanta, who got involved just the night of the shifting based on Home Minister Shinde's decision.

To top it, the lapse on the part of the team shifting such a serious patient in not having an arterial line ( a thin catheter inserted into an artery) to monitor her blood pressure in real time is being passed off as a great feat that they achieved at 30,000 feet, in the airplane. Such histrionics of putting in an arterial line in an airplane would not have been necessary if it has been done before shifting the patient.

She had undergone three surgeries, suffered two cardiac arrests from which she was revived but the clotting of blood in her arteries had reportedly left her weakly comatose. And yet, the government insisted on shifting her. Why? Was it to shift the focus of media attention and protestors from Safdarjung Hospital? Was is just to pretend to be seen as doing the best for the patient? Can the public be blamed for regarding the whole midnight operation shrouded in secrecy with suspicion? After all, what need of secrecy when doing such a 'noble' thing as seeking the best care for the patient.