Bengal Doctor Suspended Over Facebook Post on Grim Dengue Situation

Kolkata: The West Bengal health department has suspended a doctor for alleging in Facebook posts that the state government is suppressing facts relating to the dengue menace in the state.

Written in Bengali, Arunachal Dutta Choudhury's posts described the scale of the outbreak and the helpless condition of the doctors. “When the number of patients I was treating was about 100, I knew we were working in warlike conditions, but after it approached 500, I realised it was impossible to wage war,” he wrote.

The doctor, an MD, was posted at Barasat District Hospital in North 24 Parganas district. He claimed that 500 people were admitted at the hospital on October 6 and wrote about his struggle to diagnose the patients, many of whom were lying on the floor.

He said it was impossible to treat the patients due to their sheer number and on account of the conditions in the hospital. He alleged it was impossible to locate patients in a crowd of hundreds who occupy every inch of the hospital building. “Even if one can be located, it is difficult to reach him as one has to step on other patients lying just about everywhere,” the 62-year-old wrote.

The social media posts amount to "misinterpretation in the public and (are) derogatory to the hospital administration," the suspension order issued by the state health department on Friday read.

According to the health department, there have been 19 deaths in state-run hospitals since January and over 18,000 cases have been reported in various government clinical establishments. Opposition parties have alleged that the Mamata Banerjee government is trying to suppress the number of deaths caused by dengue.