When the country was reeling under the impact of the second wave of the pandemic last year with citizens struggling to procure beds, medicines and oxygen, doctor and social activist Kafeel Khan had this feeling of déjà vu. In August 2017, he witnessed the deaths of 63 children and 18 adults when the Baba Raghav Das Medical College’s Nehru Hospital in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, ran out of oxygen supply.
The doctor, who was subsequently arrested and imprisoned, until the charges were dropped, documented his experience in his book, ‘The Gorakhpur Hospital Tragedy – A Doctor’s Memoir of a Deadly Medical Crisis’. At the book launch in Bengaluru on Monday, Dr. Kafeel recalled his fight for justice. “Everybody knew of my story in bits and pieces. The second wave and resultant citizens’ suffering was a déjà vu of the 54 hours of struggle five years ago. Nobody knows how my family has suffered, nobody talks about the suffering of the 80 families who lost their loved ones,” he said. He alleged that the root of the tragedy was the fact that the Uttar Pradesh Government didn’t pay ₹68 lakh for oxygen procurement.
