At 10 pm on Sunday in this stinking ward of the Government Medical College (GMC), a staff nurse walks from one bed to another. She comes back and takes the seat nearly 15 minutes later and finds that the syringes have got sterilised. An attendant with a patient comes to her to find the doctor. There is none in the doctor's room. For nearly half an hour, there is no sign of a doctor.

In ward no 6 of surgery, Narendar Dev, who met with an accident is not able to find the doctor. For the last nine days, another patient, Sher Singh Parihar of Doda, finds the doctor coming to the ward only once or twice during the night.

“We are left to the mercy of God,” grumbles, Kanta, an attendant with one of the patients in the ward.

In this hospital, where doctors have often been accused of negligence and with this hospital frequently witnessing the quarrels between the doctors and the attendants, doctors not attending to duties at night is another thing leaving the hospital crippled.

So when the senior doctors can't come to the hospital for a round during the night, doctors in this hospital virtually leave the patients to the mercy of God.

“It is the senior and the junior resident doctors only who handle this hospital. So with no check of senior doctors, the doctors are careless in their duties,'' said, Sources, adding, `` consultants and other senior doctors come only if a patient faces a major complicacy.

... contd.