mid-day editorial: Being human is the need of the hour

Recent reports and images of a man carrying his wife's body on his shoulders for over 10 km in Odisha's Kalahandi district, went viral on social media.

After he was refused an ambulance by hospital authorities, the man had to struggle his way back home on top of a hill, about 50 km away. His wife had succumbed to tuberculosis at a government hospital, which asked him to vacate the bed immediately after she died because of a dearth of beds at the facility.

Yesterday, a Kanpur man lost his son (11) after he was asked to carry the ailing boy from one department to another at the hospital. He was not provided a stretcher and by the time he made it to the paediatric department with the boy in his arms, his son had died. Although a number of probes have been initiated, it is only when concrete results will emerge that we will believe that there is genuine will to identify and punish the culprits.

Soon after such tragedies, several committees are constituted to investigate cases or offer solutions. Unfortunately, though, either innocent people are made scapegoats or no results emerge at all. In any case, the rich and mighty get away scot-free.

Medical facilities, however, need to introspect and look for faults in the system. Why was the Odisha man denied an ambulance? Is it because none were available or the hospital was short-staffed? Why couldn't the doctor, or even the paramedics, recognise the obvious emergency in the Kanpur case? While both incidents elicited widespread outrage on social media platforms, it wasn't the first such instance and, we suspect, it won't be the last.

Hospitals could be facing a hundred challenges, but humanity needs to precede everything. Soul searching and non-negotiable follow-up action is in order.