Break the dahi handi by the book

Doctors carry out survey on injured govindas in order to come up with a set of safety guidelines, after government proposes to acknowledge the human pyramid as a form of sport

Doctors carry out survey on injured govindas in order to come up with a set of safety guidelines, after government proposes to acknowledge the human pyramid as a form of sport

Want to form a human pyramid for next year's dahi handi celebrations? If all goes as per plans, then one will have to adhere to certain guidelines as doctors are now collecting data to draw out rules to form the pyramid.

The step has been taken after the state government said that it was planning to confer the status of a sports activity on the traditional dahi handi celebrations.


Ambulance services had a busy day conveying nearly
200 injured govindas to city hospitals on Monday

However, in order to attain the sports tag, rules will have to be made. Hence, doctors are now collating information from all the govindas who were injured in the celebrations on Monday.

Doctors at civic-run hospitals are collecting information from the govindas by asking their friends and family to fill a form and answer questions pertaining to the height of the pyramid, the level at which one was injured, the period of training undertaken and the prize money of the dahi handi.

"This is a baseline study that we have taken up to understand the nature of injuries. The state is considering including dahi handi as a sport, and no sport can be complete without rules.

This study will help us draw basic guidelines to make human pyramids," said Dr Balkrishna Adsul, associate professor of Preventive and Social Medicine, Sion Hospital.

After collecting the information, doctors from the preventive and social medicine department and the emergency medical services department of the three major civic hospitals Sion, KEM and Nair will draw up a list of precautions to be taken in order to reduce the chances of injuries.

Dr Satish Dharap, professor of emergency services at Sion Hospital, added, "We have also added a point to see if the injury was sustained by a participant or by a bystander, as last year, one of the injured was a boy who was simply witnessing the revelry.

Apart from the data collected from those discharged, we will also analyse the govindas during their recovery."

Almost paralysed
On Monday, 21-year-old Apeksha Kadam was left nearly paralysed after she sustained a grievous injury during the dahi handi celebrations. She was rushed to KEM Hospital on Monday from Bandra.

Doctors at KEM said that by the time she arrived at the hospital, she had already lost sensation in her legs owing to a fracture in her vertebral column. "We immediately started her on neural steroids.

Fortunately, she responded to the medicines. Any further delay and the girl would have been left bed-ridden for the rest of her life," said Dr Pradeep Bhosle, heading the orthopaedic department of KEM Hospital.
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He added that attention to the safety of the govindas was a serious issue that needed to be taken up.