The misery of burn patients in Assam

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT

Guwahati, March 2: “At least once in our life, we experience an incident of burning on our body by any way of consumption. But most of our people are totally not concerned about the probable way to be happened of these type of incidents in our life. We take precautions for the other diseases like heart attack, diabetes etc. but ignore the consequences of burning,” said Dr. Bhupendra Kumar Sarma, in charge of the Burn Unit, mecare Hospital, Guwahati, to our reporter in an interview.

This is a very significant aspect in our society that the people are also very less concerned about the burning accidents. The patients sustaining burn injuries are also neglected in various ways by the family members and the society many cases.

In Assam, there are only two specific places are there, where the burn patients are admitted and treated practically. Though the government has taken initiatives regarding the burn patients of the state and introduced burn units in various hospitals, practically those have gone in vain. The Guwahati Medical College Hospital and the mecare Hospital, Guwahati only provided treatment to the patients sustaining burn injuries.

Though, the government had started the burn units in Dhuburi Civil Hospital and gaon Civil Hospital, both of these units are not working as on date.

This is also to be enclosed that, every year, lots of people get injured by burning of body because of various reasons in the state. Many cases are related to the domestic violence against women and accidental cases for lack of knowledge about the burn injuries. The cost of the treatment also deprives people to go for it because, it is too expensive for a general public. And the burn cases are not totally curable and the percentage of success is also very low. After the treatment also the signs of the burns remained on the body and the patient cannot remove it, which make them solitary from the society. If the injury is deep more than 40 percent, the treatment became costlier and co the families also do not want to waste their money on this. “This is very pathetic but, the people are not interested to invest money for female and children but the male patients,” said Dr. Sarma.

Sarma again said that, many times the husbands prefer a second marriage than to provide treatment to their wives.

Apart from that, the burned patients of the state, who can come to these two places of Guwahati can be treated and others have to fight with their fate. Maximum burned patients died because of lack of treatment and the negligence of the society. The general publics do not want to help for the patients sustaining burn injuries because of the negligence. And the reason behind this negligence is mainly illiteracy of the people and lack of knowledge and interest about the burning possibilities.

There are various types of burning possibilities like electrical burn, chemical burn, flame burn, acid burn etc. In Assam, the rate of flame burn is more than the others because of availability of kerosene as a way of preparing food.

The hospitals also give less priority about the burn patients except these two hospitals. There are some allotted rooms for the burn patients in every health centre but those do not have the sufficient equipments to provide immediate treatment to the patients. Moreover, the doctors and other medical workers also do not want to work in these cases for its complexity of treatment and lack of earning extra money. Generally, to be a complete burn unit in a hospital, there should be the specially trained personnel, like doctors, nurse and others, which are not available in our health centers in the state.

 According to the sources, there are probably more than 300 hundred burn cases yearly come to the mecare hospital for treatment, among which, 30 percent are complicated. And this rate is increasing every year. Last year, among 99 numbers of indoor complicated cases, 20 percent patients died within the treatment. And, 70 percent complicated cases were cured because of the newly developed process of immediate operation of the patients within 2 days of admission and operation done ob early excision and skin grafting.