Taking a strong stand, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday said the nurse who cut off the thumb of a eight-day-old girl in a state-run hospital deserves to be sacked as she had no right to continue in her job.
A day after the shocking incident at the Balurghat General Hospital in South Dinjarpur district, doctors at a premier state-run hospital here performed a plastic surgery on the child.
Banerjee said the law needed to be amended, if required, to mete out summary punishment to those commiting such acts of negligence.
"Why wasn't she (the nurse) more careful in treating the child? The thumb got severed when she tried to cut the bandage. What is this? Sheer nonsense!" an angry chief minister said at a programme in the SSKM hospital here.
Dubbing such negligence as a "big crime", Banerjee said: "This can never be totlerated. I feel those commiting such acts, should lose their jobs immediately."
With the state health department placing the nurse under supension, she said: "It is okay that she has been suspended. But after what she has done, she has no right to continue in her job. Negligence is a big crime. If there are no laws as such, the law needs to be amended (to mete out summary punishment)."
The baby, admitted to the Balurghat General Hospital on Friday with diarrhoea, met with the tragic incident on Sunday night with the nurse - in an attempt to cut a leucoplast to remove the channel made for administering saline - severed the thumb with the scissors.
Around 10.30 p.m. the child's mother Mamoni Mondal saw blood oozing out from the affected area and found the thumb was missing.
She called her husband, Babla Mondal, who confronted the nurse.
"But she said she had no idea about the finger. I looked everywhere and finally found the thumb from the dustbin. Helpless, with the finger in one hand and my child in the other, I began pleading with the doctors to attend to my child. But none came forward," said Babla Mondal.
After an hour, hospital superintendent Tapan Biswas came to the ward and asked the parents to take the child to the North Bengal Medical College and Hospital in Siliguri of Darjeeling district.
But that was not the end of their ordeal. "At NBMCH, the doctors told us that it would be meaningless to admit our baby there as it did not have the infrastructure to do a plastic surgery on the child," said Mamoni Mondal.
The child was brought back to the Balurghat district hospital, and has now been shifted to the SSKM where the doctors performed the plastic surgery on the child.
The government has announced it will bear all expenses for the child's treatment.
