Patna: Health authorities in Bihar have ordered an investigation after a minor boy was administered dog vaccine at a government hospital in Bihar. Angry parents of the boy have demanded action against the negligent health staff.
Eight-year-old Vishal Kumar, a resident of Padmawat village in Jamui, was rushed to the main government hospital in the town on Wednesday when he was bitten by a street dog.
The doctors on duty prescribed the medicines and asked the boy’s father to purchase them as they were not available at the hospital store. The man bought the injection for Rs160 from another medical store in the hospital premises.
However, the medical store staff didn’t check the medicine properly and administered the boy the anti-rabies injection that is normally given to dogs. Rabies is a fatal viral disease that attacks the nervous system and is contagious. It is usually transmitted through the bite of an animal, such as that of stray dogs.
The story came to light when a villager saw the wrapper in the hand of the boy’s father and told him about the mix-up. The man hurriedly rushed back to the hospital and got his child admitted there for treatment.
“We have been informed the boy was administered the injection which is prescribed for dogs. This is indeed a very serious lapse on the part of the medical store running in the premises of the government hospital,” chief medical officer at the Jamui Sadar hospital Dr Vinay Kumar Sharma said over phone on Thursday. He said an inquiry had been ordered and action would be taken after the probe report came.
Boy’s father has registered a formal complaint with the senior government officials, seeking punitive action against the negligent medical shop. “The medical stores in the hospital campus are playing with the life of the people. The government should initiate tough action against them,” the boy’s father Nukul Ram told the media.
Jamui, an eastern Bihar district some 170 km from Patna, was in the news again last week when a large-scale fraud in the testing of COVID-19 cases was reported, prompting the state government to sack seven health officials. The probe highlighted how fake names were entered in the hospital registers to fudge testing data.
The government sacked the health officials after the local media highlighted glaring irregularities in COVID-19 test data in some districts of Bihar where fake names and mobile numbers were entered into the hospital registers. “At a primary health centre in Jamui, ‘0000000000’ has been written as the mobile numbers of 28 people out of 48 who were allegedly tested for COVID-19 on January 16,” said the media report.
