Sanjay Choudhary
A shocking video widely shared on social media show an 80-year-old woman from Bhojpur in Bihar who suspected to have suffered brain haemorrhage had to be carried around on a plastic sack in a government hospital as no stretcher was available on Friday.
The Telegraph reported that the woman was identified as Phuljharo Kunwar.
Video shows the frail woman lying on the sack on a dusty road and then being carried by three men into the emergency ward of the Sadar Hospital at Ara in Bhojpur. The 80 year old’s weight caused the sack to bulge downwards..
The Telegraph quotes the woman’s relatives as saying that she had to be lugged around from one department to another inside the hospital too for tests and doctors’ advice as no stretcher was available.
“At first, two of us ran around in different directions in the hospital for a stretcher, but there was none. We asked some hospital employees, but they either did not even bother to answer or told us to wait,” Munna Kumar, Kunwar’s grandson, told the newspaper.
Munna went on to say: “We did wait for a few minutes, but realised we were losing precision time. We looked around and saw a torn plastic sack. We made our grandmother lie on it and carried her around to doctors, for a CT scan and then back to the emergency ward where she was later admitted. There were just the three of us and we had a hard time carrying her around.”
The Opposition leader in the state and Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav shared a photograph of the woman being carried on the plastic sheet and said: “This is chief minister Nitish Kumar’s BJP-type of development during 16 years of (his) rule.”
