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It’s one of the saddest moments of my life to hear about Rohit’s sad demise in such an unfortunate manner! My deepest condolence to Rohit’s family, parents and his friends! As we do not have any other forum to speak about this matter and share my views with the students, I would like to do so here, not only as a teacher but also as an alumnus of this Institute. I spent almost nine years as a student in the LLR Hall, incidentally the hall, where Rohit lived. I would like to share my grief with his hall mates.
I was fortunate that I did not require any treatment from the hospital. In our days also, we did not have much faith either on the quality of care. I could not remember any specific instance of an interaction with our doctors, except in one visit with an intention of grabbing a medical certificate. The attending doctor also understood my requirement with a good heart. However, we were fortunate enough not to have similar incident in our time, which may be due to less number of students on those days.
However, after I joined as a faculty, time and again, the poor infrastructure of the hospital came into its limelight due to chain of deaths of faculty, staff, their relatives in this Institute. Though it is rare (and may be sometimes not so apparent), a student’s death for the same reason is not unknown to us. After each death, we were alarmed and discussed about improving the condition of our hospital. The last one I could remember, which agitated many of us and also raised many of the questions similar in nature, is Prof. Santi Kal’s death last year. That time also, various measures were assured from the administration, however were quickly forgotten, as we got ourselves busy into our daily affairs.
I also lost one of my dearest ones about twelve years ago due to lack of medical facility not only in BC Roy Hospital in particular, but also in Kharagpur and near by places. My father in law was visiting me on that day and his pace-maker failed suddenly. He required to be placed under an artificial heart-lungs machine, which was only available at hospitals of Calcutta. With some initial treatment at the Railway Hospital and after arranging an ambulance from the B C Roy Hospital, when we started, he was almost gasping and succumbed on his way. That was one of my horrific journeys from Kharagpur to Kolkata by road and I could feel for Rohit’s friends, who were with him during his last hours.
About a few years ago, when there was a talk of setting up of a super-specialty hospital, we were all excited. In fact, President of India laid the foundation stone with much fan-fare. I do not know what prevented our administration to go ahead with the scheme. Many a time, then head of the SMST expressed his frustration in his inability to move the matter. Is it due to lack of money or lack of will or lack of belief that a technological Institute is capable of running a hospital? Whatever may be the case, I always felt that as Kharagpur is a remote place from the City, an Institute of National Importance should have additional responsibility for extending the advanced health-care, not only to its own community, but also to the people near-by.
No words are sufficient for this deplorable situation. I feel ashamed when many of our students reported how indifferent was the initial reaction from their mentors. I only hope that the Institute policy makers will take a lesson from this incident and plan for building up necessary infrastructure and program for facilitating the tertiary health-care to its own community.
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