The X-ray plate showing the fish hook and (below) the baby’s father Krishna (extreme right) at the news meet in Dinhata on Friday. Pictures by Main Uddin Chisti

Cooch Behar, Sept. 5: A one-year-old girl from a village in the Dinhata subdivision has been living with a fish hook stuck in her throat for the past two-and-a-half months and no hospital in the region has been able to help her.

Mitali Das’s father, Krishna, a small farmer, has already taken her to three hospitals, including North Bengal Medical College and Hospital in Siliguri, but in vain. Today, he spoke to the media to express his helplessness.

“It was on June 16 that my daughter swallowed a small fish hook which she had found in the courtyard of our house in Paharganj village. She was crying in pain when we took her to the Gossainmari health centre from where the doctors referred her to the subdivisional hospital in Dinhata,” Krishna said.

Dinhata town is around 25km from Gossainmari.

The doctors at the subdivisional hospital got an X-ray done and sent the baby to North Bengal Medical College and Hospital. “But the doctors there asked me to take my daughter to SSKM Hospital in Calcutta as they did not have the equipment to extract the fish hook from her throat. But I do not have the money to go to Calcutta, so I took her back home,” Krishna said.

Ever since, the baby is being fed mashed food, which, the father said, she swallows in pain.

Krishna said he owned two bigha of land and had to feed a family of 14. Besides Mitali, Krishna has a five-year-old son, wife, elderly parents and school-going and unemployed siblings. “Along with cultivating my land, I also work as a farm labourer to make ends meet. My brothers and sisters are too young to earn. I have nowhere to turn to for help.”

Kishalay Bikash Nayak, a child specialist with the Dinhata subdivisional hospital, said though he had not seen the girl, the X-ray plate and the report of the doctors showed that it was a serious case.

“From the X-ray plate it is clear that the hook is stuck in her throat just behind the beginning of the sternum or breastbone. If it remains like that for long there is every possibility of an infection. So it has to be taken out immediately by a cardio-thoracic surgeon, but I am afraid that the surgical tools needed for the procedure is not available in north Bengal,” Nayak said.