Gorakhpur hospital tragedy: 5 questions to ask those maligning Dr Kafeel Khan
Conflicting reports - all of the speculative kind - have surfaced on the role played by Dr Kafeel Khan in Gorakhpur hospital tragedy, which has claimed over 79 lives so far. On the one hand, he has been hailed as a hero who rushed to ensure that the oxygen supply resumed as soon as possible on the intervening night of August 11 and 12 at the BRD Medical College. On the other, allegations that he was siphoning off oxygen cylinders for his private clinic have been thrown around as well.
It's imperative that we look at the Kafeel Khan conundrum more attentively because it's not only in the reports per se, but in what they reveal - the systemic biases and lacunae within India's failing healthcare as well as the headline-hogging high-voltage impact of a Muslim name in spotlight in the current climate of intense polarisation - that the real stories lie.
#TheBurningQuestion #GorakhpurTragedy: Was Dr Kafeel Khan involved in smuggling oxygen cylinders? https://t.co/N1jAqk6ito #ITVideo pic.twitter.com/A2jGFIzMfd
— India Today (@IndiaToday) August 14, 2017
Dr Khan's name grabbed the headlines for his dedicated response to the unfolding tragedy at BRD Medical College. It was said that he "emptied his own pocket to keep the children breathing", and that he drove himself to get the spare cylinders. It was said he shed tears seeing the kids stop breathing and did his best to save as many as he could.
The former head of the department of paediatrics and chief of the encephalitis ward ran around frantically "borrowing" cylinders and keeping the supply on, and even paid Rs 10,000 from his own bank account. His team continued to help the children ambu bags, manually pumping in air, as the supply dipped, to keep them breathing for few more hours.
But that's the heroic side. Now allegations are flying thick and fast that he might have been involved in financial irregularities in the hospital, along with his supervisor Dr Rajiv Mishra, who was suspended on Saturday. There are allegations that Dr Khan had a simultaneous private practice at a clinic run under his wife's name, and that he might have been involved in ferrying out oxygen cylinders from the BRD Medical College stocks.
Yet, the questions that must be asked are as follows:
1. Why is the blame being pinned on one or two doctors who were in fact hands on and actually did save lives on the particular night when disaster struck? A tragedy of such mammoth proportions cannot be the outcome of one tiny irregularity here and there by one or two individuals. The culpability lies with the entire hospital administration as well as the state health department, which showed unbelievable lack of tack and fatal red tape, that collectively ended up claiming over 79 lives in six days?
2. Why is Dr Khan's past being raked up to malign him in this particular incident? Whatever be the allegations - mostly speculative in nature - they need to be probed only when they have a bearing with the current case in hand. Whether he allegedly impersonated someone else and sat on another person's behalf during a medical exam, was suspended by Manipal University over criminal charges, or allegedly sexually violated a nurse - those allegations do not rule out the fact that his presence of mind saved lives on the intervening night of August 11 and 12, else the casualty number would have gone up even further.
3. Why did the state and hospital administration wake up to Dr Khan's alleged misdemeanour only after the tragedy had struck? If he was guilty of any of the abovementioned follies, what was the reason behind the hospital appointing him as the head of the department of paediatrics, the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and keeping him on board of the supplies unit? If Dr Khan is guilty - and nothing has been proven and awaits a thorough probe - then so is the entire hospital management, the state department that allowed the premier government healthcare unit of Gorakhpur to be a bastion of corruption at every step.
4. Why is Dr Khan being singled out and a malicious social media campaign on to insinuate that his being a Muslim was instrumental in the doctor intentionally sabotaging the hospital's name, so as to bring former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav back? Most of the muck is being peddled by spurious fake news websites, which have been exposed multiple times as spreading utter lies and baseless rumours.
Brilliant! We now have a troll army bringing us the #TruthOfGorakhpur 1/n pic.twitter.com/GFgNc2teDX
— SamSays (@samjawed65) August 13, 2017
So the first argument is whataboutery. What about 2014 & Akhilesh govt? 2/n pic.twitter.com/CZPJGj3fUQ
— SamSays (@samjawed65) August 13, 2017
And then the inevitable happens. One person makes a grammatical mistake & the rest follow... "seasonally" 5/n pic.twitter.com/vlvOnEkhlL
— SamSays (@samjawed65) August 13, 2017
As fake news warriors have revealed online, BJP IT cell is on an overdrive trending #TruthAboutGorakhpur, that insinuate sickening things about Dr Khan, and creating an atmosphere of unimaginable obfuscation.
5. Why was the four-time MP from Gorakhpur and the four-month chief minister of Uttar Pradesh not aware of the massive oxygen supplies crisis in the hospital despite being red-flagged by the staff over seven times in the past seven months? In addition, how is it that CM Yogi, despite visiting the hospital on August 9, didn't foresee the ensuing disaster? What was the purpose of the visit then, beyond photo-ops and publicity across pliant media platforms? Is this shifting of blame therefore the sole purpose of focusing the negative spotlight on Dr Kafeel Khan?
Institutional failure
In addition, there are a number of questions on the incidents leading up to the deaths of children on the intervening night of August 11 and 12, and they are pertaining to how the hospital administration and the state department functioned.
Firstly, despite the oxygen supplies agency, Pushpa Sales Private Limited, issuing several reminders, why was it not paid since November 2016? As a result, once the oxygen supply was cut off - even for two hours, as per the hospital reports - deaths happened not only in the children's ward, but also in the general ward.
Secondly, media reports and general chatter quoting sources in the health department have indicated that payments to the agency were held back because kickback weren't paid to different people holding positions in the hospital administration and/or state's health department. In fact, the order to withhold the payment "came from Lucknow", according to reporters. Even staff salaries have apparently not been paid in many instances. What about these major fallacies that have happened over a period of seven to eight months, cumulatively leading up to the avoidable deaths of children and adults at the BRD Medical College hospital.
Gorakhpur "received orders from Lucknow to stop payment" to oxygen supplier; Police "terrorise" patients' familieshttps://t.co/xP8M6Rifvm
— Puja Mehra (@pujamehra) August 13, 2017
Thirdly, the Uttar Pradesh government has started cow ambulances with a veterinarian in each ambulance, when that luxury isn't available to regular ambulances for humans. The compulsory need to use Aadhaar to available ambulances hasn't helped either. In addition, ambulances were held up because of CM Yogi's security, and parents of sick/dead children had to wait until the security cordon was lifted. Even on August 9, the BRD Medical College was busy preparing for the high-voltage Yogi visit rather than attending to each and every need of the patients admitted there, despite the encephalitis crisis brewing for months (and years) at end.
What does it say of the work culture of BRD Medical College, and indeed the state health department of Uttar Pradesh? Is this the reason, the UP health minister Siddharth Nath Singh has been busy finding scapegoats to blame the tragedy on?