Other States - Rajasthan   

Doctors fight a losing battle

PTI Photo

Death from nowhere: A rickshaw-passenger dies on the spot after the Jaipur serial blasts on Tuesday evening.

JAIPUR: Doctors and paramedical staff in all emergency and intensive care wards at the Rajasthan government’s Sawai Man Singh Hospital here had their hands full trying to revive blood-spattered victims, many of them brought in a semi-conscious state from the sites of the bomb blasts, even as anxious crowds thronged the premises looking for their dear ones.

Most of those admitted to the hospital had suffered wounds in the front. There were some whose faces were disfigured and limbs mutilated. Though doctors did their best, many succumbed to their injuries.

The hospital administration summoned all resident doctors, nursing staff and medical students for emergency duties and they were busy treating the injured till late in the night.

The Special Task Force of the police was deployed at vantage points to prevent the entry of “undesirable persons” and journalists.

The scene at the Day Care Centre in the hospital’s first floor was pathetic. About a dozen persons were writhing in agony. Two girls, aged between six and eight years, were lying in a pool of blood on one bed. Doctors were trying to resuscitate them. Their mother stood nearby in tears.

On another bed, 18-year-old Shaukat lay unconscious with bandages all over his chest and legs. His father, Gul Mohammed, said the boy was a labourer and carrying wheat sacks in Tripolia Bazaar when he was hit by the blast.

A resident doctor, Manjunath, told this correspondent that he attended to seven patients. Four of them died. “Their pain was beyond imagination. I could not save their lives as they had fatal injuries,” he rued.

A large number of people had come to the hospital in search of their relatives and friends. Two boys were looking for their mother who had arrived in the city from Karauli town in the evening and was supposedly travelling in a bus in Johari Bazaar.

The tragedy also brought out the best in the people. As doctors and relatives of the injured appealed for blood, people rushed in large numbers and waited in a queue outside the blood bank.

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