Team Herald
PANJIM: The doctor, who was made a scapegoat for the 2017 oxygen shortage tragedy at Gorakhpur’s BRD Medical College, has released a book. Dr Kafeel Khan’s ‘The Gorakhpur Hospital Tragedy’, that provides details of the tragedy, the official apathy displayed by the government and how the CM responded to it and its resultant aftermath. The book describes a series of incidents starting with the dreadful night when the hospital ran out of oxygen to the day of his arrest, subsequent imprisonment and his dismissal from service more than four years later.
Speaking on Monday, at an event held to commemorate the launch of the book at Calangute, Dr Kafeel Khan said the tragedy happened because the government refused to pay the supplier his dues which totalled Rs 68 lakh.
By the time Khan reached the hospital, eight children had already died. He said the relatives of the patients, who had been informed about the lack of oxygen, were either yelling at the hospital staff or begging them to save their children.
Khan was faced with the dual challenge of treating the deteriorating condition of the children, on one hand, and arranging for oxygen cylinders on the other. Despite Khan and his team’s night-long efforts to save the children and arrange cylinders, 23 children in the PICU and NICU and 18 adult patients in the medicine ward had succumbed by 10 am the next day.
By the evening of August 11, the news of children dying due to oxygen shortage had spread like wildfire and media persons began pouring in at the BRD Medical College. By then, a few local journalists and photographers had already reached the College and began reporting on the crisis.
In the book he talks about the reaction of the CM Yogi Adityanath who arrived at the BRD Medical College. Khan was suddenly the villain, accused of leaking the news of oxygen shortage to the media.
Khan was sacked last month, four years after the incident. Everyone else accused of negligence were reinstated.
