Malpractice in hospitals makes news in India only when patients die or become critically ill due to medical malpractice. These errors occur in many hospitals in the country. The reality is that the common man and the poor do not seek redressal when they are victims of such wrongdoings. Moreover, they may not have the necessary sense of law needed for this.

The reason for telling this now is that 14 thalassemia patients who received blood in UP have contracted HIV and severe jaundice. Two children under the age of sixteen have been infected with deadly HIV and twelve others have jaundice. The information has been released by Lala Lajpat Rai Hospital which is run by the government. The authorities of Lajpat Rai Hospital are trying to wash their hands off saying that the children may have contracted the fatal disease because they received blood from some private hospital. Suffice it to say that life has become a tragedy for innocent children, regardless of who is responsible.

India has strict requirements and safety standards for receiving blood from donors and giving it to patients. Yet in many parts of the country, such mistakes are happening and patients are dying. We hear about such incidents from time to time in our state as well. Recently, the media had reported the plight of a pregnant woman who was transfused with blood from the wrong group. Indifference and lack of responsibility on the part of employees are often the cause of such mishaps.

The latest to suffer are children who received blood from Kanpur's Lala Lajpat Rai Hospital. It is believed that the collected and stored blood may have been injected into the children without proper testing. However, the government hospital authorities are arguing that the patients may have received blood from some other hospital earlier. Thalassemia sufferers have to receive fresh blood every six months. About 200 children regularly come to Lajpat Rai Hospital to receive blood. In this incident too, it is the children of the lower-class families of the society who have been the victims of injustice.

Medical malpractices in government hospitals in UP, the country's most populous state, often make headlines. The mass deaths in UP hospitals during COVID-19 were shocking. Despite the provision of more hospitals and treatment facilities, the common man has to fall at the feet of many for treatment. Children born with thalassemia will need blood transfusions for the rest of their lives. India has the largest number of people in this category in the world. Therefore, hospitals need to take extreme care when receiving blood and injecting it into another person. Children in Kanpur who have thalassemia along with deadly HIV and jaundice pose a big question to the health workers.