By Matters India Reporter
Mokama: The Sisters of Charity of Nazareth on July 16 closed the emergency department of their hospital in Bihar after a mob attack.
“We have informed the Station House Officer of the local police station our decision to close the emergency department,” Sister Anjana Kunnath, administrator of Nazareth Hospital in Mokama, told Matters India.
Mokama town is some 90 km southeast of Patna, capital of Bihar state.
Earlier, in a letter addressed to the hospital’s well-wishers, Sister Kunnath narrated a mob of some 30 people attacked a nun while they ravaged the only functioning ward in their hospital. They had brought a man who was already dead from a gunshot injury, but insisted that he still had pulse.
“The mob equally terrorized the working staff, the watchman and the patients. Ten of the eleven patients developed fever and loose motion out of fear and the blood-pressure of one patient went high due to panic,” she said.
The mob kicked and beat Sister Aruna Kerketta, who was on the on-call duty.
Sister Kunnath further noted that the attack occurred under “the watchful eyes of a handful of Mokama police personnel” who remained mute spectators to the mob fury.
The mob had rushed into the ward shouting, “Get ready with everything and call the doctor,” and took a stretcher to bring the person. They pushed the stretcher until the end of the ward where two female inpatients were resting. One person from the mob tried to beat one of them.
As the head nurse enquired what was happening, the other nurse called the doctor on duty. The doctor called two from the mob and a policeman to the nurses’ station and informed them that the patient was dead.
Some from the mob kept shouting that there was pulse in their patient. As they tried to assault the nurses, they shut themselves inside the nurses’ station along with the doctor. As the mob kept banging on the door, the nurses called the on-call nun.
Sister Kerketta, who was unaware of the commotion, asked a person from the mob about their patient whose body was outside the ward. He said the 40-year-old patient, Pankaj Kumar Singh, was shot while going home from work on a motorbike.
Hearing this, Sister Kerketta tried to call the administration, but the mob beat her and one of them snatched her phone saying that the patient had pulse.
“It is tragic to lose a young man like that abruptly. It is ever more tragic to terrorize the on duty nurses and the doctor,” Sister Kunnath’s letter says.
According to her, the hospital functions with a handful of nurses and doctors as it was difficult to recruit trained doctors and nurses to work in it.
At present, the hospital has only medical outpatient and in-patient services along with outpatient obstetrics and gynecology. It also has services such as laboratory, X-Ray, ultrasound and pharmacy, besides a ‘Wellness Centre” and an advanced physiotherapy department.
“Many stroke patients regain strength to lead a manageable life through both of these centers,” Sister Kunnath’s letter said.
She also said the local people had been asked the administration to make the hospital fully functional. However, the same people “do not help us to make it function the way a hospital should function;” Sister Kunnath regretted.
She also said the hospital finds it hard to function in “such hostile environment.”
The Nazareth hospital began in 1948 with 25 beds and gradually grew to 150-bed facility in 1965. The congregation based in Kentucky in the United States started it at invitation of Bishop B J Sullivan of Patna and Father Marion Batson, the pastor of Mokama, both Jesuits.
Six nuns came to India a year earlier when the country became independent.
A community health department was started in 1961 and in 1984 the hospital was expanded to a 280-bed facility with the aid of a German funding agency.
The nuns also launched several health projects such as “Mahila Mandals, immunization program, TB and Leprosy program. In 2004, the hospital started a Community Care Centre to care for the HIV/AIDS patients.
In the past 73 years, the hospital has treated hundreds of thousands of people, mostly poor, from many districts of Bihar, West Bengal and even from the borders of Nepal. However, the nuns started winding down the hospital in 2012 for various reasons.
The hospital’s schools to train nurses and pharmacists, started at its inception, have produced hundreds of healthcare personnel who now serve in India and overseas.