At Sangli eye ward, infection is normal

"Our relatives’ suffering has all to do with the negligence and apathy shown by the staff of the civil hospital. They now run the risk of losing their vision but the hospital staff, instead of attending to the patients, have been cracking jokes at our expense," complain Suvarna Kathare and Pushpalata Gaikwad.

People enter the eye ward freely. Sterile conditions just do not exist. There are no checks despite the fact that patients are beingtreated for infections. Even the relatives walk into the ward, complete with shoes on.

In a corner, a cot has been placed precariously close to a power fuse-box. Cobwebs float everywhere. Worse, there are no bins to dispose off cotton swabs and bandages. Patients make do with empty sweet boxes.

Suvarna and Pushpalata say that even now, a week after the surgeries, the hospital authorities have not bothered to inform them formally that their relatives are stricken with eye infections.

"We gauged the seriousness of the situation when our people started complaining about irritation and pain on January 4. When nobody seemed interested in responding to our queries, we had no option but to eavesdrop on the conversation of the staff. It was then that we discovered that an infection had spread," say harried relatives.

Suvarna and Pushpalata’s kin figure in the list of infected patients, released by hospital dean A R Raul – Suvarna’s grandmother Yashoda Dhumal is from Wadgaon village in Karad taluka of Sataradistrict and Gaikwad’s relative Kamalabai Surve from Savarde village in Sangli district.

"The apathy shown by the doctors and the hospital staff is agonising. Our relatives are crying in pain and nobody does anything. Had it not been for our poor financial condition, we would have definitely taken them to the big, private hospitals," they lament.