When an NGO announced an eye operation camp in Gurdaspur district, Punjab, these senior citizens thought it a good opportunity to get their cataracts and other eyesight-related complications corrected without much expenditure.
Little did they know that the ‘operation’ would cost them their eyesight.
At least 44 people from Gurdaspur and 16 from Amritsar have become visually impaired after undergoing surgeries that didn’t ‘follow norms’.
A civil surgeon from Amritsar has reportedly said that cataract surgery in the eye camp was performed under “severe unhygienic conditions”.
They are now being provided free medical treatment in the ENT hospital of Amritsar and Gurdaspur. Too little, too late?
In a case of bitter irony, this shocking news comes just a few days after 11 women died post ‘sterilisation surgeries’ at a government-organised family planning camp in Bilaspur district of Chhattisgarh.