Patient’s ‘rat bite’ death: Medical superintendent at Pune’s Sassoon hospital told to ‘hand over’ charge

Recently, the Sassoon general hospital was in the news over allegations that a patient had died in the ICU allegedly due to rat bites. The Sassoon authorities had launched an inquiry into the alleged incident and show cause notices had been issued to a sanitary inspector, senior nurse and ward boy of the hospital.

The relatives of the deceased man had submitted a written complaint to Dr Vinayak Kale, dean of Sassoon hospital.

Kale had then told The Indian Express that the post mortem report had shown that the deceased patient had succumbed to complications related to the spinal cord injury. “Pest control is regularly done at Sassoon hospital and a rat bite cannot cause sudden death. However, based on the written complaint from the family, an inquiry has been launched in the matter,” he had said.

The Indian Express tried to reach out to Kale, but he was unavailable for comment.

Incidentally, the Directorate of Medical Education and Research had also said that the reason for the death of the patient was not due to a rat bite. However, the DMER authorities had stated that such incidents could not be taken lightly.

The order to Taware was issued by state medical education commissioner Rajeev Nivatkar. When contacted, Nivatkar confirmed that the order had been issued.

The new medical superintendent, Dr Jadhav, is an associate professor in the community medicine department of B J Medical College. He had previously held charge as medical superintendent of the college and hospital for three months during the tenure of then dean, Dr Sanjeev Thakur.

When contacted, Jadhav confirmed that the order had been issued and he had taken charge on Saturday itself.