How about maintaining a gradient of seriousness here? I could first use my only visit to the hospital as an example, and speak for the few of us who've had relatively uneventful encounters with its staff. No harm done. No indignation felt.

But as I was going around speaking to people, gathering material for this article, I was quite moved by the enthusiasm everyone showed for the cause of contributing their share of tragic narrations. Their passionate bitterness showed me how long they've been waiting for this article. Some people say it's better to close the hospital, than run it the way it is being run.

And how is it run? The thing about the hospital that hits first, and perhaps the hardest, is the apathetic attitude one sees in its staff. Never mind that the facilities are pathetic - from the simplest of tests, to X-rays, one is constantly referred to outside hospitals. Never mind, really. "But don't treat us like we're pests, or favour-seekers." cries the united voice. The in-patient ward makes no arrangements for food, and it is often a great deal of trouble for patients to engage someone to bring them food. But these patients are often more upset with the way they are almost ignored, or sometimes harmed. Given that the student must pass through this dreadful rigmarole for even a medical certificate, it can be understood how much pain this causes them.

Then of course, there's the (in)famous linear combination principle on which medication is dished out. They have about ten or so medicines ranging from Brufen to Tetracyclene. Suffice it to say that any affliction you have will be met with an arbitrary combination of the above stated medicines. People have told me of Brufen (a classic pain killer) for cough, Gelusil for back-aches etc.!

The nature of the most common complaints is the incompetence of nurses, and their promptness in blaming the patient for what goes wrong. Very often, what starts out as a fever or a headache, ends up in three days or longer at Malar Hospital.

Take for instance, Alpha, who had to be given an intravenous saline drip. Having inserted the needle into his left hand, the nurse left, rather than stay around the first time to see nothing goes wrong. However, accumulation led to Alpha's left hand swelling up a great deal. Too weak to call out himself, Alpha called the nurse through another patient nearby. The nurse blamed him for moving his hands too much and bringing it upon himself, and then proceeded to jab him thrice in the right hand before 'satisfactorily' locating the vein. Alpha spent many days in Malar.

Beta, who was diagnosed with Gastroenteritis, was given nine injections with a supposedly sterilised needle. When he demanded that he be injected with a disposable syringe, he was given an unconvincing argument revolving around the words 'boiling point'. Beta now says, "The same 'sterilised' syringes are used for the Tarams and Vels junta, and everyone else for that matter. How am I to know I don't have AIDS now?" In any case, the last of those injections was improperly administered, and resulted in his artery being punctured. Beta too, spent over three days in Malar. His appeal to the institute for full compensation is currently under consideration.

While on the subject of injections, this happened to Pi. He had to be injected with a dose of tet-vac. Armed with a dispo-van syringe (which is something that the hospital refuses to provide students with) and plenty of trepidation, he approached a nurse. The nurse must have been in a particularly bad mood, for she did not insert the needle, she hammered it home. In fact, the needle went quite deep into his shoulder and brushed against the bone. She proceeded then to inject all the fluid into his arm in one go - one savage thrust of the lever (is that what it's called?). The pain in Pi's arm did not recede for nearly four days.

But more about apathy. Gamma needed to urgently see the doctor, but the doctor put down his requests for emergency consideration, by saying he would have to wait till 12 o' clock, for the counter to open, so Gamma could collect his card. It wasn't till an outraged Gamma moved the Director that the doctor agreed to see him.

Delta felt acute pain that he couldn't quite place, a day before an end-semester examination. While the doctor repeatedly proposed to give him a Gelusil, she also persistently accused him of faking the pain to escape taking the end-sem the next day. Disgusted, Delta went to Malar, where he was finally diagnosed with a kidney stone that had left his kidney and remained lodged in his ureter. More recently, Delta spent seven days in the hospital, as his viral fever could not be diagnosed, and he flew to Hyderabad, where he recovered eventually.

In a campus like ours, to what power of ten must a degree of negligence compare, if a snakebite victim, Epsilon, gets the shock of his life to see that the only antivenin available had comfortably expired in (by a conservative estimate), 1984?! He was rushed to Malar where it was found that they too did not have any antivenin. From there he was rushed to Apollo, where he was treated. Presumably the snake that had bitten him was not of a highly poisonous variety, but then who's to say what would have happened if it had been so?

And then, the kind of incident that enrages one the most, is one which reflects a doctor's incompetence. Zeta's sprain had been played down as insignificant. He was told to get a few weeks' rest. Back home in Lucknow, his doctor told him it was a sprain of the worst kind, and acted in time to slowly bring Zeta to recover. He now shudders at the thought of what might have happened if he had followed the institute doctor's advice and ignored it. Eta's ligament tear had also been played down. An outside doctor was so shocked to discover the tear, that he/she considered writing a letter to the institute doctor, questioning his/her qualifications.

We talked to the CMO (Chief Medical Officer) of the hospital and he had the following things to say:

Injections: He said that the syringes that are provided by the hospital are more hygienic than the Dispo-van disposable syringes. In fact, he claimed that they are as hygienic as in an operation theatre. The other point was that of finance: about 70 injections are administered every day: it would simply not be possible for them to afford so many Dispo-van syringes.

About the poor way nurses sometimes treat patients, and their crude methods of giving injections, he claimed that it was only on occasions that accidents occurred. With regard to the incident about beta, he claimed that such occurrences are extremely rare: the chance that an artery would be punctured during the process of an injection is about 1 in 10,000. He also said that negligence by the hospital staff is indeed not an unheard of occurrence.

While addressing epsilon's case, he said that the competence required to inject anti-venin into a patient's blood stream was well beyond anything the hospital had. It is true that anti-venin must be administered very carefully, for it contains the poison in trace quantities, and if too much is injected at one go, the patient's death would only be accelerated. He also said the anti-venin is not stored in the hospital because 'it might give a false sense of security'.

About the poor impressions other doctors' had about the health care offered here, he said that it's usually their (the other doctors') tendency to glorify the treatment that they offer and look down with contempt at other facilities (like the institute hospital), and therefore should not be taken too seriously.

Finally, he added that the hospital was just a primary health care centre, and therefore does not have very sophisticated facilities. He also said that they would try their best to improve the facilities and it would be much better if students complained to him directly.

At the end of the whole exercise, even after the hospital authorities have been given a platform for their own defence, the students seem far from convinced, and their abysmal faith in the institute hospital remains unflinching.

Appalling! I shall wind up with that one word. The common cold has no cure, so one can't blame the hospital in any case concerning it. But here's a definite victory for the IIT Madras Hospital - the only kind of person who can surely be cured here, and better than elsewhere, is a hypochondriac.