Bare Facts about Calcutta, Government Pavlov Hospital

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Bare Facts about Calcutta, Government Pavlov Hospital

Observing what goes on in a government mental hospital would be a

good test of the work culture of the region. How the non-medical

staff treats patients in any government hospital in West Bengal would

provide a fine study from this point of view.

But in the case of mental patients, especially women, the readings

would be shorn of any doubt. The recent revelation that women

patients in the Calcutta Pavlov Hospital are left without a stitch on

them may be shocking, but it is not new.

What may be considered more shocking is that the condition of mental

patients in hospitals has been repeatedly exposed by NGOs, by the

media, and objected to by doctors. Nothing has changed. Not only are

the women left naked even when male workers and workmen enter the

wards, they are beaten, tied up, starved, made to work and also

deprived of the soap, oil and toothpaste allotted to them.

There is an unsounded depth of cruelty, contempt, callousness and

tyranny among the workers in mental hospitals endorsed by the

establishment that allows this institutional abuse of helpless human

beings to continue unchecked.

What happened in the Pavlov Hospital is a good illustration of this

complicity. A doctor objecting to the way his patient has been kept

is bullied by the workers till the superintendent apologizes to them.

Then, in spite of the incident having been reported in the media,

there is not even the pretence of a civilized treatment of patients

four days later. Instead, officials feel that trying to bully a

doctor who protested against his patient being left without clothes

is a `minor' problem.

There is nothing wrong in women patients wandering about naked.

Everything, apparently, is always at the washerman's. The officials

are irritated that the doctor had brought the patient's relatives

into the ward and that the media had got hold of the facts. Is this

just the lack of accountability, gross habits of cruelty, greed and

exploitation, or a frightening ignorance about the fact that the

mentally ill have to be respected as human beings?

Matching these responses almost exactly are the remarks of the

director of health services. It is the fault of the visitors who

entered the wards, she feels.

The director appears to agree that what happens inside mental

hospitals is no one's business.

The health minister, predictably, has asked for an inquiry and a

detailed report.

There is hope that no one will follow that up.

Kolkata Pavlov Hospital. 18,Gobra Rd. Kolkata-700014. 2329-7170

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080314/jsp/opinion/story_9016006.jsp