Jalore Family’s Frantic Attempt to Save Their Child: Traveled More Than 1200 Kilometers
A failed journey led by ill diagnostic capabilities of our health system. In a recent heart breaking incident, where a 9-year-old Dalit boy from Rajasthan’s Jalore district died on Saturday at an Ahmedabad hospital as a result of an assault on July 20 by a teacher who became enraged after witnessing the boy drinking water from a pot intended for upper-caste individuals. This story along with the intolerable mistreatment also unfolds a story of carelessness.
According to a report by Indian Express, the family of nine-year-old Indra Kumar Meghwal, the Dalit boy from Jalore, Rajasthan, desperately rushed him from one hospital to another over the course of 25 days beginning on July 20. They traveled nearly 1,300 kilometers through Rajasthan and Gujarat before he passed away on August 13 in an Ahmedabad hospital, the eighth place he had been taken.
Subhash Chandra Mani, an assistant director of the social justice and empowerment department in Jalore, has released a report based on comments made by Indra’s father Devaram, and one of his uncles.
The report, which was given to the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC), New Delhi, states that on July 20, in Jalore, Rajasthan Indra departed for school at about 7 am and arrived there around 30 minutes later. Between 10.30 and 11 a.m. during the lunch break, he continued to sip water from a pot meant for Chail Singh, the teacher, and owner of the school.
According to the complaint, Singh allegedly assaulted Indra after he saw him drinking water from the pot. Due to this Indra reportedly began bleeding from his ear and collapsed to the ground.
According to the report, Indra went to his father’s puncture repair shop which he runs in Jalore, Rajasthan only and is across the street from the school, after school was out for the day and told him what had happened. The family then provided him with medications from a store and gave them to him because his ear discomfort was getting worse.
But the medications turned out to be of no help, Indra’s family took him to Bajrang hospital in Bagoda, 13 km distant from Jalore; it is unclear from the story whether this was done on the same day or the next. The family brought him back home as soon as the agony lessened, according to the report.
The family brought him to Astha Multispeciality hospital in Bhinmal, which is around 50 kilometers from Surana village of Jalore, Rajasthan, a day or two later when the agony flared up once more. After suffering from discomfort for a day, they returned him to his house. He was taken by his family to Triveni Hospital in Bhinmal, where he was admitted for two days, but the pain returned the next day.
The family took him to a nearby hospital in Surana, Jalore the day after he was taken home when the agony flared up once more. The doctors there advised them to take him to Deesa in Gujarat, which was 155 kilometers away. The family checked Indra into Karni Hospital in Deesa. About 24 hours after starting treatment, the physicians released him, and the family headed back to Rajasthan.
Indra’s condition deteriorated after returning his home in Jalore, and they once more transported him to Triveni hospital in Bhinmal. He spent three days being treated here. When the pain grew worse, the family hurried him nearly 300 kilometers from Bhinmal to a hospital in Mehsana, Gujarat, where he was detained for six days.
But as his condition showed no signs of getting better, the family drove him nearly 270 kilometers to Geetanjali Hospital in Udaipur. Indra was detained here for a day before being transported to the Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad on the advice of the local medical staff.
Indra reportedly spent nearly 24 hours in the Ahmedabad hospital before he passed away at 11:30 a.m. on August 13. He was admitted to the hospital on August 11 and passed away on August 13, according to a doctor at the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital who is familiar with Indra’s situation.
The first diagnosis included venous sinus thrombosis (clots in the brain’s veins), chronic suppurative otitis media (CSOM), and eye infection. When a child gets a throat infection, the infection may ascend through the Eustachian tube and reach the middle ear (which connects the throat to the middle ear).
Acute suppurative otitis media is the medical term used when the infection affects the middle ear (ACOM). A child who has had ACOM for a week or so eventually develops CSOM, a chronic condition. The tympanic membrane, or eardrum, can then be perforated by CSOM, at which point pus begins to leak out.
The cavity in the skull is connected, so if the infection is not treated it could spread to all of the essential organs there. The definitive cause of death has not yet been determined; the doctor stated. The fact that the 9-year-old boy’s family traveled a total of 1259 kilometers between Jalore and these multiple hospitals across Rajasthan and Gujarat, between July 20 and August 13 just to see their child’s death is something really tragic and painful and brings up a lot of questions.
It is literally taking a person’s death for us people to learn lessons which in every possible way is unacceptable. Mistreatment on the basis of caste, and moreover the negligence, and lack of knowledge in the health sectors of the nation have cost us Indra’s life.
