When the only thing that comes free at India's mass eye camps is loss of vision

A medical accident, things going wrong at a free surgery camp are not unheard of. Unfortunately, such incidents are not even isolated. In November of this year, eye camps were banned in Kanpur after eight lost their eyesight. The notice communicating the same was issued to the hospitals in the district while an advisory was issued in public interest asking people to exercise caution when it came to medical procedures at such camps.

A recent report in The FrontLine details the harrowing experience of six people losing vision in one eye following complications from cataract surgery done at a free medical camp by a private hospital. The patients---Raja Ram (66), Ramesh Kashyap (62), Nanhi Devi (65), Sultana (78), Sher Singh (72), and Rama Devi (55) are all residents of Kanpur's Sughardeva village.

While one continued to suffer in excruciating pain, the other requested the doctor for some more pain killers. Some of them are still contemplating getting eye-balls removed. While the thought is frightening, but not more than the possibility of infection reaching the brain. Free medical camps run by a private hospital or even the largest public hospitals, none, unfortunately, come free of medical negligence.

On February 14 of this year, people travelled from villages across Muzaffarpur to take part in protests outside Shri Krishna Medical College Hospital, Muzaffarpur's largest public hospital. Most of those protesting and their family members, had attended an eye surgery camp wanting to get rid of cataract. Of the over 300 patients treated at the camp, at least 36 of them contracted severe eye infection in the operation theatre and developed endophthalmitis, a bacterial infection of the eye often caused by infected surgical instruments. Seventeen of them had to get their eye balls removed to keep the infection from spreading further.

Negligence continues pan India

The damage caused at such 'free camps' is often irreversible. Unfortunately, the hapless victims cannot even pursue matters legally or demand, 'an eye for an eye' because rarely ever are authorities held accountable. An RTI by Scroll, seeking information from the central health ministry further threw up discouraging figures. As per the response, from 2006 to 2022, at least 469 people had either been blinded in one eye or had their vision seriously affected after undergoing surgery at eye camps. The figure, as is anybody's guess, is an underestimate when compared to the actual cases and ground reality. 

In Punjab, the Ghuman medical camp tragedy is yet to be completely erased from the memory of people in Gurdaspur district. In 2014, at least 15 people lost their sight after undergoing cataract operation at a charitable hospital. The surgery followed a free eye check-up conducted by an NGO. The patients underwent surgery at Guru Nanak Charitable Hospital in Ghuman village. However, the Punjab government ordered a probe and Punjab Police later arrested a Jallandhar-based eye specialist and coordinator of the NGO.

In an interview to Scroll, Dr BS Jha, medical superintendent of Shri Krishna Hospital, gave the patients the option of eyeball removal and installing stone eyeballs. "But all of you please get stone eyes installed and bring me the receipt. I will personal pay for it, on humanitarian grounds. It will not give you sight, but it will make your face look better." As for the tragic incident that happened and why it happened, he said, the blindness caused was unfortunate. "Cluster infections happen sometimes even in cases where 100% care is taken."

Several reports quoting these poor patients stand testimony to how they were sent back home, when they returned to the hospital a day or two after the surgery with several pain and inflammation. Only after the number of complaints could no longer be dismissed or ignored, did the district civil surgeon Dr Vinay Kumar Sharma formed a four-member committee of health officials to conduct a preliminary enquiry. As it turned out, the hospital clearly, may not have followed the prescribed infection control protocol.

The report after the investigation found the presence of, "two types of very infectious bacteria." The report also mentioned, "improper sterilization of instruments and suggested that the room used to conduct the operations was infected." But it gave a clean chit to the doctors who performed the operation.