Banaras Hindu University TOI 10.02.2019

Man drops off pregnant wife at rly stn, vanishes

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Chennai:10.02.2019

Railway police rescued a pregnant woman stranded at Chennai Central abandoned by her husband.

The woman, who gave her name as Jennifer, of Salem, came to the station with her husband and went to Kasturba Gandhi Government Maternity Hospital in Triplicane for a health checkup.

The couple returned to Central to board a train to Salem. Her husband Sabapathy made her sit at a place and told her he would be back with tickets. He never returned.

The woman searched for him in vain. Seeing her crying, railway police came to her rescue. They informed the Flower Bazaar police station and the woman was sent to the government home in Mylapore. TNN

Apollo moves HC against Jaya death probe panel

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Chennai:10.02.2019

Apollo Hospitals has moved the Madras high court pleading for an interim stay on Justice (retd) A Arumughaswamy commission’s proceedings relating to the medical treatment given to late Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa. It has asked for a direction to stop the commission from inquiring into the adequacy or inadequacy and correctness of the medical treatment given to her during her hospitalization in September-December 2016.

The hospital has also asked for a direction to quash proceedings relating to inquiry into correctness and efficacy of the medical treatment given to Jayalalithaa.

The hospital has also filed a second writ petition seeking to appoint an independent medical board of specialist doctors who are not associated with any of the parties involved (state government or Apollo) and give a time-bound report directly to the high court. This is, in case, the high court finds that the terms and reference of the Arumughaswamy commission include an inquiry into the efficacy of the treatment given to Jayalalithaa.

The writ petition is likely to be heard on Monday before a division bench of Justice R Subbiah and Justice Krishnan R.

The hospital has stated that the commission has gone beyond the scope of its terms of reference and behaved in a partial manner to fasten liability on Apollo, alleging medical negligence in Jayalalithaa’s treatment.

In their affidavit, Apollo has stated that the nature of questions framed by the commission for witnesses and recording of their depositions disclosed a predetermined mindset against it.

Apollo also stated that the commission had launched a “roving and fishing inquiry” into the correctness, adequacy and appropriateness of the treatment for which the commission neither had sanction nor expertise.

Hospital horror: Docs leave scissors in patient’s stomach

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Hyderabad:10.02.2019

Doctors at the city-based premier public hospital, Nizam’s Institute of Medical Sciences (NIMS), left a pair of six-inch surgical scissors inside a patient’s stomach during a hernia operation, sparking outrage. The surgical scissors remained inside the patient’s abdominal cavity for three months, before it was discovered on Friday night when the patient was rushed to NIMS after she complained of severe stomach ache.

The patient, 33-year-old Maheshwari Chowdhary, was suffering from acute stomach ache on and off since her surgery on November 2 at the hospital. She was discharged on November 12 but had to be rushed to NIMS on the night of February 8, 2019, after she complained of excruciating pain.

After undergoing a battery of tests at the hospital, an X-ray revealed the goof-up. The pair of scissors was subsequently removed through another surgery on Saturday morning and she is now recuperating in the intensive care unit of the hospital.

Lashing out at the hospital authorities, the patient’s relatives said they tried to cover up their negligence and were not even willing to hand over the Xray film to them. The patient’s husband first lodged a complaint with the NIMS Resident Medical Officer (RMO) after which he filed a complaint with the Punjagutta police on Saturday afternoon.

“She had been complaining of severe stomach pain at times but we thought it was due to the surgery. When she was brought to the hospital yesterday, the X-ray report clearly showed the scissors. Initially, the hospital authorities were reluctant to give us the X-ray but we managed to get it,” said the patient’s brother-in-law, G Mahadev.

“She had come to the hospital in a bad condition on October 30. She had gangrene of the stomach. The team of doctors did a good job and the patient was fine. She had an issue after three months. The scissors have been removed and the patientissafe.Nointernalorgans were damaged,” said Dr K Manohar, director, NIMS, adding that a three-member committee has been constituted to probe the lapse and action will be initiated based on the committee’s report.

HARD TO STOMACH:The surgical scissors remained inside the patient’s abdominal cavity for three months, before it was discovered on Friday night

Med univ appeals against HC order to revalue answer scripts

Direction Overlooks MCI Rules, Says Plea

Pushpa.Narayan@timesgroup.com

Chennai:10.02 2019

Stumped by court order directing the Villupuram Medical College dean to re-evaluate the answer script of a first year student who failed twice, Tamil Nadu Dr MGR Medical University has challenged the order saying its academic authority cannot be undermined.

The state university, which urged the division bench to stay the single judge order, has made a government medical college dean one of the respondents in the case. The appeal by registrar Parameswari Srijayanth said the judge had overlooked regulations of the university and Medical Council of India that don’t provide scope for revaluation. The university conducts examinations, evaluates and awards degrees to 22 state-run medical colleges and all other self-financing medical colleges in Tamil Nadu.

Of the three first year papers, the student, Priyanka Venkatesh, passed in one subject and failed two others. She appeared for the supplementary exam in November but failed to clear that too. In December, the 19-year-old moved the court seeking directions to re-evaluate her anatomy and biochemistry papers. In her petition Venkatesh said that incorrect evaluation led to her failure in the subjects.

She listed out the answers she had written for 11 questions in bio-chemistry and six questions in anatomy along with the prescribed answers from the text book.

Justice T Raja directed the Villupuram Medical College Hospital dean to appoint an expert faculty member in the subjects to evaluate the answers and submit a report to the court by February 5.

On Friday, however, the university challenged the order stating it would dilute the regulations of the university and go against several court judgments. The university said it had a double evaluation system to check human errors. Answer scripts of students who fail the first evaluation will have the benefit of second evaluation. After the evaluation, the first mark or average, whichever is higher, will be taken as the final score. “The university has not issued any text books and the contention that the answers were based on the text book we issued is false,” the appeal said.

102 PHCs to get revamp, men & machines to provide better care

Shruti.Suresh@timesgroup.com

Chennai:10.02.2019

As many as 102 urban primary health centres (UPHC) under the city corporation will be revamped with new equipment and machines, as the Centre has sanctioned a funding of ₹7.6 crore under the National Urban Health Mission (NUHM).

Officials said lack of equipment and manpower at corporation-run UPHCs may soon become a thing of the past. “More than 100 such PHCs — built many decades ago — have been facing shortage of equipment as the civic body couldn’t mobilize funds,” said a health official.

The civic body has been seeking funds to improve facilities and infrastructure at PHCs, which were accorded administrative sanction last week, for more than two years now. “Using the fund, equipment and diagnostic tools will be made available. Several UPHCs don’t have ultrasound scanning machines, magna vision, cell counter, semi auto-analyzers, which hinders our services,” the official added.

The city corporation runs 140 UPHCs which face issues stemming from lack of doctors and additional manpower like auxiliary nurse, midwifes. “Besides for equipment, the funding will be used for sourcing staff. We are preparing a list of equipment needed at all PHCs,” said a zonal health official.

In a 2017 audit by anti-corruption group Arappor Iyakkam, it was found that 81% of the PHCs lacked scan facilities and only 6% had doctors from 8am to 3pm. “Most of the PHCs we visited had the equipment, but those were not functional. The problem here is that while corporation keeps buying equipment, maintenance is not done properly. When tenders are floated to procure such equipment, they don’t include an annual maintenance contract,” said Jayaram Venkatesan, of Arappor.

Lack of equipment, however, was only a part of the problems at these PHCs as they are often shortstaffed. “Usually, the doctors come between 10am to 12noon. If a patient comes in the afternoon, the doctors won’t be there,” said Valli, a patient at Dhasarathapuram PHC. While visiting the PHC around noon, the doctor was unavailable, and the staff there said the doctor was asked to go for duty to another PHC in the zone.

Why sharing CBSE answer sheets must be mandatory

Manash Pratim Gohain & Shradha Chettri TNN

New Delhi:10.02.2019

Ahead of the Central Board of Secondary Education examinations for Class XII, faulty evaluation and tabulation of answer sheets is a worry that cannot be discounted. TOI has highlighted in a series of reports how students are put to traumatic experiences because of mistakes in the evaluation. Parents, students, experts and even school principals feel that one lasting solution for this is to make the evaluated answer papers accessible in password protected digital format to all candidates.

One can imagine the ordeal of a teenager who is told he has obtained 58 marks in mathematics when in reality his effort has earned him 90. This is an example of an actual error, one of many due to shoddy evaluation or mark tabulation recorded year after year. Such a discrepancy in marks is almost criminal in an era when even half a percentage can rob a student of a seat in a desired college or in a desired course in a university — and might well alter the course of the aspirant’s academic destiny.

Stakeholders want all answer scripts available in digitized form

The stakeholders in school education are now veering to the idea of all answer scripts being available to students in digitized form.

After most school tests, students are given back their answer sheets — it is even mandatory in some institutions and parents are asked to sign them — so it is ironical that at a level where seeing the answer script actually makes a difference, they are afforded the chance only through a drawn-out, paid process. “Not everyone can afford to pay the extra amount. As it is the students already pay a good sum as examination fee,” observed Yashwant Singh Negi, principal of Government Boys’ Senior Secondary School, Ghitorni. A Class XII student pays₹1,230 as exam fees and an additional sum for any subject he may take up other than the prescribed five.

Though CBSE secretary Anurag Tripathi considered it unnecessary to give back the answer sheets, Negi explained why letting all students have access to their answers could lead to the eradication of the problem of errors — most of them due to sheer lack of diligence on the part of evaluators. “With children getting to see their papers, one can ensure the accountability of the teacher assessing the paper and make it easier to determine where the mistake occurred,” he said. Rectifying wrongly assessed papers is a month-long process and entails costs for the students.

Ashok Agarwal, lawyer, Right to Education activist and head of the All India Parents’ Association, was certain that a measure like this would increase transparency and put the examiners under pressure to be accurate. “If all answer papers are accessible, there will be a dramatic improvement in the evaluation process. It will be a deterrent to examiners who take evaluation in a non-serious manner,” Agarwal said. TOI has reported instances of a few teachers taking the assessment lightly and making errors.

Experts say a measure like this would increase transparency and put the examiners under pressure to be accurate