Come Diwali, the greatest Indian celebration, and a considerable number of people all over the country get burns and many die of burn-related injuries. One doesn’t realise the gravity of the situation till tragedy strikes at one’s doorstep. This Diwali, a small diya kept near a staircase, in twenty seconds straight, had my aunt (my brother-in-law and fellow TSI columnist Prashanto Bannerjee’s mother) in its deadly wrap. She, being a neighbour since my childhood, is perhaps closer to me than are any of my real aunts. Despite her saree being made of cotton, and despite my brother-in-law noticing the burning saree instantly and putting off the flames with buckets of water within twenty seconds, she got 65% burns – and at 72 years of age, that is dangerous... very dangerous! When we reached Apollo Hospitals in New Delhi – where we finally admitted her – the doctor told us that if she had been of Prashanto’s age, 36, he would have given her only a 20% chance of survival with the 3rd degree burns that she had. But then, there’s a small background story to all this. Prashanto’s mother was actually taken initially to Max Super Speciality Hospital. To our surprise, we were told by Max doctors to get her admitted somewhere else since they didn’t treat burn injuries… The quick research we did after our visit to Max gave us a shocking statistic. In Delhi, the capital of India, there are only two hospitals capable of treating burn injuries. Other hospitals in fact don’t even admit burn victims! And being Diwali, Safdarjung Hospital, the only hospital other than Apollo for burn victims, was expected to be very crowded. If Delhi has only two, then you can imagine how many hospitals does the average Indian city have that handle burn injuries – none!
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