Abid Bashir
Srinagar (NVI): Three days after a junior doctor was tested positive for Covid-19 at a hospital in north Kashmir’s Baramulla, a Public Interest Litigation has been filed against the hospital incharge, for allegedly allowing the same doctor to treat patients.
The PIL, filed before the J&K High Court, seeks reply from the Medical Superintendent, Government Medical College Hospital, Baramulla over how he allowed a Covid suspect doctor to treat patients till April 21, even as his samples were taken on April 19.
The petitioner has sought judicial action against the Medical Superintendent, accusing him of playing with the lives of hundreds of patients, who came in direct contact with the Covid-suspect doctor. A junior doctor at GMC Baramulla was tested positive for the Covid-19 on April 21.
The petitioner, Suhail Ahmad Lone, from Kanispora, Baramulla told NVI that the young doctor, who tested positive for novel coronavirus on April 21, was allowed to attend the patients even after showing symptoms related to coronavirus. “The samples of doctor were taken on April 19,” Lone said. He said that the doctor was allowed to attend the patients even before his final report was received on Tuesday (April 21), the results of which came positive.
The petition, a copy of which is with the NVI, reads that there is no clue how many persons/patients were examined by the doctor from April 19 to April 21.”For risking the lives of all those who came in contact with the doctor, the blame lies on the Medical Superintendent,” it reads.
“My question in the first place is that how the doctor was allowed to work at Hospital despite being the prime suspect of the virus,” the petitioner writes.
He said that preliminary reports suggest that the doctor in question has treated or attended to at least 200 patients from April 19 to April 21. “Who knows fate of these 200 people? How can they be traced,” he said. “In J&K, 80 per cent Covid patients are asymptomatic.”
However, Chief Medical Officer Baramulla has urged all the people in the district who were treated by the doctor and tested positive, to report to the hospital or else be ready for punitive action for concealing the contact history.
It may be recalled that the junior doctor posted at Government Medical College Baramulla became the first doctor to test positive in the Kashmir Valley where Covid-19 cases have reached 435 with five deaths so far.
