Colleagues of Dr Vandana Das have demanded a probe into the alleged dereliction of duty from a senior medical officer when the attack happened at the Taluk Hospital in Kottarakkara in the early hours of Wednesday.
Dr Vandana, a house surgeon, had been stabbed to death by a drug addict who was taken to the hospital for medical examination by the police.
Junior doctors have claimed that a medical officer who should have attended to the patient was not present in the treatment room. According to a complaint raised before Health Minister Veena George, medical officer Dr Pournami was resting in an adjacent room.
The junior doctors said Vandana went to the adjacent room to alert the medical officer when the accused, Sandeep, turned violent and attacked a home guard. Unaware of this, Vandana returned to the treatment room and was fatally attacked by the accused, the junior doctors said.
No trauma care
Meanwhile, Vandana's batchmates at the Azeezia Medical College in Kollam, have claimed that the Taluk Hospital in Kottarakkara was ill-equipped to save her life. "Trauma critical care should have emergency intubation (a medical procedure that can help save a life when someone can't breathe), which was absent at the hospital. If that hospital had the facilities, maybe Vandana would have survived," said the fellow house surgeons.
In the absence of trauma care facilities, Vandana was rushed to a private hospital in Thiruvananthapuram, but her life could not be saved.
Who is responsible?
Former Health Minister KK Shailaja visited the bereaved family members on Friday. An inconsolable KG Mohandas, the father of Vandana, asked her who was responsible to protect them. "If they did not have a gun they could have at least thrown a chair at the man and stopped him," Mohandas was heard telling Shailaja.
