Editorial: Ensure Better Medical Facilities for Accident Victims

There has been another accident on Sikkim’s roads. This time, the mishap claimed one life and injured seven others, three of them grievously. Only a few days back, another road mishap had claimed seven lives and left one person grievously injured. This section has spoken often about the need to make Sikkim’s roads safer, so this time, let us consider the inexcusable lack of emergency medical facilities for the nature of injuries that accidents in Sikkim usually cause. The three persons with more serious injuries in the latest road mishap and the one survivor from the previous mishap are all undergoing treatment in Siliguri. Accidents in Sikkim, whether on the roads or falls around rural homesteads or from under construction high-rises, invariably leave victims with head or spinal injuries. But Sikkim does not have a neurosurgeon. It has two referral hospital – a State Referral Hospital in STNM Hospital and a Central Referral Hospital at the Sikkim Manipal Institute of Medical Science – and yet, when it comes of accident victims requiring neurological attention [which is the case of most accident survivors here], a sub-division of North Bengal is better equipped than the combined resources of an entire State! Lack of human resources cannot be accepted as an excuse anymore because the State now has two referral hospitals and a full-fledged medical college in place. One needs to check the number of patients with spinal cord complications undergoing treatment with traditional bone-setting experts locally to realise that the lack of neurosurgeons is felt not only by accident victims in Sikkim. Also inexcusable is the continuing lack of a dedicate trauma centre for accident victims. Many years ago, one was commissioned for the District Hospital at Singtam, but bureaucratic short-sightedness and administrative bungling conspired to deliver a stillborn project. What Sikkim is left with then is a situation which keeps the risk alive for accident survivors – having them undertake a nearly 100 km drive over an extremely poor road [the NH 31A] before their real treatment can even begin. Some urgent policy decisions are required to ensure that accident survivors are guaranteed the required medical care in Sikkim itself.