Book review: The Gorakhpur Hospital Tragedy by Kafeel Khan
Lessons From a Crisis
Consider this: the disbursement of funds under any budget follows a sequence. In Uttar Pradesh, it was as follows. The Finance Minister allotted the budget to the Medical Education department. The Principal Secretary of Medical Education sent it to the Director General of Medical Education. It was then sent to the Treasury Department. Funds for the Baba Raghav Das Medical College were routed through the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gorakpur University, which received it from the Treasury Department. At BRD, the supplier of oxygen for medical purposes would submit the bill to the superintendent-in-chief (SIC), who sent it to the pharmacist for verification, who then forwarded it to the nodal officer for oxygen supply, who then sent the bill back to the SIC, who forwarded it to the Principal, who would then after scrutiny, send it to the accounts department. The accountants would prepare the bill and send it to the drawing and disbursing officer, DDO, who forwarded it to the UP Treasury Directorate.
This convoluted system, unsurprisingly, resulted in suppliers dragging their feet or even balking at supplying essential items like oxygen. This was also one of the aspects that played a key role in the deaths of patients in BRD Medical College in August 2017. Dr. Kafeel Khan, the man in the eye of that particular storm, blows the lid off the rot in the system in his recently released memoir of those ill -fated days.
Liquid oxygen ran out at the state-run BRD Medical College’s Nehru Hospital in Gorakhpur on the evening of 10 August in 2017. Reportedly, over the next two days, more than 50 patients lost their lives, the majority of them children. Dr. Kafeel Khan, an assistant professor in the college’s pediatrics department, found himself initially hailed as a hero in trying to source oxygen for the patients, and then branded as a villain. He was suspended from the BRD, an FIR was lodged against him and he was jailed, all in short order. The media circus that ensued chronicled Dr. Khan’s rise and fall; Dr. Khan tries to set the record straight through this book.
However, this is not an easy book to read. It brings home a host of unpalatable truths. How even after 75 years of Independence, certain basic rights like good universal healthcare remain out of reach for the poor and marginalized; the rot in the system that seems endemic; the all-pervasive corruption. And above all, the apathy and lack of accountability in people who are in positions of power and whose decisions, or lack of thereof, are critical.
There are two main parts to this book. One part deals with the events that unfolded in August 2017 and how the tragedy then played out. The other part has to do with Dr. Khan’s seven months in jail.
The questions that haunt Dr. Khan in the aftermath of the harrowing tragedy are bound to trouble the reader, too. Why is it that it was a junior doctor who was running himself ragged trying to source oxygen and save lives? How is it that the people in senior positions were either missing in action or strangely apathetic in taking decisions at that critical time? How can a state health minister say at the start of a press conference ‘August mein har saal bachhe marte hai` (there are deaths every year in August)? According to Dr. Khan, the minister was pointing to the annual August mortality rates. In this statement, however, lies the tragic truth — human life, even the life of a child, is so seemingly devalued that their deaths are mere statistics.
Dr. Khan’s experience in jail is similar to others who have written about the same. In jail, all are equal but some are more equal than others, all goods and services come at a price and survival depends on accepting the circumstances and forging friendships or alliances of sorts.
The book is written in fairly simple prose with neat tables detailing the cast of characters and a timeline of events. The prologue gives us a brief glimpse into the doctor`s early life.
What shines through is the doctor’s courage in putting up a fight to clear his name and continue working. His compassion, empathy and determination to provide treatment to those who are deprived of it, is equally commendable.
The other important aspect that becomes clear from the reading of this book is that a malfunctioning system will at some point engulf all. If in August 2017 it was mainly the underprivileged that paid with their lives, the same problems touched the middle class during the second Covid wave. It behooves us as citizens, to force leaders to concentrate on things that matter like good quality healthcare, with the power of our votes. If we do not do so, we may well pay with our lives. That then, is the stark takeaway from this book.
The Gorakhpur Hospital Tragedy – A Doctor’s Memoir of a Deadly Medical Crisis. By Kafeel Khan. Publisher: Pan Macmillan. Pages 300. Price: Rs 499
An edited version of this appeared in the Sunday Express Magazine of 30 Jan 2022.
Sheila Kumar • January 30, 2022