Botched eye surgery; 16 suffer vision loss, hospital sealed

At least 16 people suffered partial vision loss after undergoing cataract surgery at a charitable hospital at Maheshnagar here, officials said today.

Ambala Senior Medical Officer (SMO) Dr Vinod Kumar Gupta said that the operation theater of hospital has been sealed.

"The operation theater was not found properly sterilized and well-equipped. It could be one of the reasons of infection," he said.

The registration of the hospital was also unsatisfactory. The receptionist of the hospital could not produce OPD and other records when SDM asked for it, Gupta said.

Charitable society 'Sarv Kalyan Sewarth Samithi' at Maheshnagar in Haryana's Ambala district conducted the cataract operation on November 24.

Gupta said that Dr Charanjit Singh had conducted the eye operations and had charged Rs 6,000 to Rs 10,000 from each of the patients.

However, Dr Charanjit said that most of the patients were all right after the surgery and were operated in a proper manner.

Haryana Health Minister Anil Vij has ordered a departmental probe into the incident.
"I have constituted a committee, SDM, Ambala CMO and Director from Eye Department, which will go and make inquiry, Vij said here.

"We have ordered to bear entire expenses of the patients including medicines," he said.
Regular operations were being conducted and it was not an eye camp, he said, adding that "all affected are adults and there is no child".

Out of 15, eye sight of 14 is improving, which is a big thing, he said. "Eye Department head, Dr Jagat Ram told me this. I met patients at the PGIMER," he said.

Gupta said that "The society had no mandatory clearance from us to hold the camp.

   They had applied for permission in 2013, but it was denied by us as we first wanted to conduct an inspection of the hospital and get details of the surgeons who will conduct operations."

A similar incident had taken place at Samalkha in Panipat in March in which 13 patients suffered from vision loss.