20 Dead As Hospital Goes Powerless For 12 Hours

Kurnool: 20 patients, including 8 children, died allegedly due to power outage at Kurnool Government General Hospital, on Thursday.

The outage was caused by powerlines crossing over High Tension (HT) wires near the hospital. However, Hospital superintendent Dr J. Veeraswami said that the deaths were not due to power outage. He squarely blamed the hospital staff for negligence and said that the duty RMO was not present in the hospital during the power outage. The superintendent also sought to blame a police outpost in the hospital premises for the power outage. He said the outpost was drawing power from a HT power line. "Power snapped because of the crossing of electrical wires with the HT line," he said.

Meanwhile, blamegame into the deaths of the patients continued with the hospital superintendent blaming the Transco officials and the local police. While the Transco officials said they were not responsible for repairing the power lines in the hospital, the police manning the outpost denied that they were drawing power from a HT line.

“We made frantic efforts to get the issue fixed with the electricity department, but no lineman was available till the next morning,” he said. He alleged that the linemen refused to climb the electric poles at night. Transco officials, however, say that it is not their duty to fix problems in the premises of the hospital. Transco superintendent of engineer G. Bhargava Ramudu said a High Tension (HT) connection was given to the hospital and the substation within the hospital took care of internal connections. Chief Inspector of the Three Town police station, Srinivasa Rao, who runs the police outpost, said they do not draw power separately for the outpost.

State health minister Kamineni Srinivas has sought a detailed report on the tragedy. He was dismayed to find that none of the duty doctors, including the resident medical officer, was present in the hospital when patients were dying.