GUWAHATI, Dec 24 - The Assam State Branch of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) has taken strong exception to the State government�s handling of the recent fallout of cataract surgeries in the MMC Hospital, Guwahati, said the State IMA in a statement here today.
At its last State Working Committee meeting held in Tinsukia on December 20, 2015, there was an in-depth discussion on the issue in presence of a few senior and renowned eye surgeons. The association said the incident of a few patients losing their vision by one eye is certainly unfortunate and a detailed inquiry is definitely necessary to bring out the cause of the infection and fix the onus of negligence, if any, such that similar dreaded complications never surface in future.
However, IMA, Assam is of the view that if something goes wrong, rare complications are inherent and inevitable consequences of surgeries and sometimes even after utmost precautions they are unpreventable. �For cataract surgeries even the developed countries have an infection rate for 1 in every 2000 surgeries, and with the poor quality control of drugs and substances used, and poor theatre environment monitoring facility in a developing country, it is not strange that the complication rate might be higher and so we keep hearing about such sporadic incidences.�
It is wrong to presume that the operating surgeon or the people involved in the surgery are intentionally causing harm to the patient and such an attitude demoralises the other surgeons and staff involved in such procedures.
IMA, Assam has expressed grave concern over the fact that on the pretext of the unfortunate incident eye surgeries have been suspended in MMC Hospital, which is a wing of the prestigious Gauhati Medical College Hospital. This has made the poor people suffer a lot and also jeopardized the ambitious 'Vision 2020 - the Right to Sight' mission of the government. The IMA demands that the government complete the inquiry soon, make the report public with the steps taken to prevent such incidents in future, and reopen the blindness control programme at MMCH at the earliest, it said.
