13 people get eye infection after cataract surgery in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada

Dantewada: Thirteen persons have been admitted to a hospital in Raipur after they contracted an eye infection following cataract surgery at a government medical facility in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district, officials said on Monday.

This promoted the health department to order a probe into the matter following which three healthcare personnel, including the doctor who performed the cataract surgeries at the Dantewada district hospital, were suspended on Sunday.

The 13 patients from Dantewada were admitted to the Dr BR Ambedkar Memorial Hospital in state capital Raipur in the last five-six days and they are under treatment, the medical facility's public relations officer Shubhra Thakur said.

Their condition is stated to be stable as of now, she said.

All the 13 persons who got the eye infection underwent cataract surgery at the Dantewada district hospital between October 18 to 22, Dantewada Collector Mayank Chaturvedi told PTI.

"When one-two cases came to light, we launched an exercise to trace the patients who underwent surgeries at the hospital in the last 15-20 days to examine the condition of their operated eyes. We covered 80 patients, and 13 of them have so far been found to be suffering from infection in their operated eye," he said.

Despite learning on October 20 about the infection to a patient who was operated on October 18, the doctor concerned continued performing surgeries till October 22 and allegedly did not inform senior authorities about the case, the official said.

The Dantewada district hospital has four operation theatres and the target is to operate 20 cataract patients every week, he said.

"So far, we have examined patients operated between October 10 and October 22. We will continue the tracing exercise and examine the condition of patients operated before October 10," he said.

After the matter came to light, the health department constituted a team to investigate it.

The probe team found that standard protocols for cataract surgery were not properly followed and the operation theatre was not properly sanitised before the surgeries, an official said.

Prime facie, negligence was found on the part of the hospital's eye surgeon Dr Geeta Netam, eye assistant officer Dipti Toppo and staff nurse Mamta Vaide, state Health and Family Welfare Minister Shyam Bihari Jaiswal told reporters on Sunday.

The three persons were placed under suspension with immediate effect on Sunday, he said.

The Dantewada district hospital superintendent has been issued a show notice, seeking his reply in this connection, he said.

Senior Congress leader and former chief minister Bhupesh Baghel targeted the state government and in a post on 'X' said "again botched eye surgery incidents have started in the BJP government."

"The same thing happened during previous BJP rule. Such an incident did not happen even once in our government (referring to his party rule between 2018-2023). Vishnu's (Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai) good governance has been proved useless and unsuccessful," Baghel claimed.

The Congress has constituted a six-member team headed by its Bastar MLA Lakheshwar Baghel for a probe into the incident.

During the previous BJP governments headed by Raman Singh, there had been several cases of patients contracting eye infection after cataract surgeries.