The health department has asked Patna Medical College and Hospital to formulate a standard operating procedure for poisoning cases to prevent a rerun of the Gandaman school incident.
On July 16, 23 children of Gandaman Primary School in Saran district died and many more were taken ill after consuming a midday meal, with government guarantee. The food was laced with monocrotophos, a common organophosphate insecticide. According to eyewitnesses and relatives of the victims, the tragedy could have been averted if the primary health centre near the village and Chhapra Sadar hospital were equipped to deal with such cases.
Amar Kant Jha Amar, superintendent, Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH), confirmed that the health department had asked him to come up with the SOP.
“D.K. Gupta, officer-on-special duty, health department, has asked us to prepare a standard operating procedure for poisoning cases. The decision to formulate the procedure has been taken following the Saran tragedy,” he said.
The Telegraph in its July 20, 2013, edition had reported how the doctors at Masrakh primary health centre, where the children were first rushed, had given them anti-emetic drugs. A.K. Ansari, the medical officer in-charge, said he had given the drugs to stop the children from vomiting. This had a reverse effect because, in poisoning cases, it is essential to make the patient vomit out the corrosive substance. Such pandemonium would, hopefully, not recur when the standard operating procedure (SOP) is in place.
Jha added: “The SOP would incorporate details like symptoms of the different kinds of poisoning, what aid should be provided in each case, how vomiting can be induced by different processes, which antidotes should be applied in which case, what should be the dose of the antidote, etc.”
The SOP would list 50 different kinds of poisoning and 12-13 kinds of antidotes used to treat them. Doctors working on it believe that the most import section would be on how to recognise poisoning cases.
Nigam Prakash Narayan, a doctor of the paediatric department of the PMCH who is also among the panel of doctors working on the SOP, said: “The most important part in the SOP would provide details about how to recognise a poisoning case.”
