Amritsar: At least 60 persons lost their eyesight after an operation at an eye camp. It was organised by an NGO in Gurdaspur district, civil and medical authorities said on Thursday.
Conducted by a non-government organisation in neighbouring Gurdaspur district last week, the surgeries left the patients completely blind with no chance of their eyesight getting restored, said Amritsar civil surgeon Rajiv Bhalla to a popular daily .
While 16 persons belonged to villages inAmritsar the rest were from Gurdaspur district. All of them were admitted in city ENT hospitals of Amritsar and Gursdaspur.
The Amritsar district administration came to know about incident on Wednesday when the patients were brought to deputy commissioner Ravi Bhagat by members of the Kisan Sangharash Samiti.
Bhagat referred the patients to the Government Medical College and Hospital in Amritsar, where tests by eye specialists revealed that all 15 had lost their vision due to a severe post-operation infection. He also said that a high-level inquiry has been ordered to find the doctors who performed the operations at the camp.
The camp was held in Ghuman village of Gurdaspur district by an NGO called Guru Nanak Foundation in the last week of November.
He said that cataract surgery in the eye camp was performed under “severe unhygienic condition” whereupon eyes of all the 60 patients were found damaged permanently.
Bhalla said that before organising the eye camp, mandatory permission was required from the district Administration and Civil Surgeons of Gurdaspur and Amritsar but all the norms were not followed.
“We have no clue about the NGO that organised the eye camp as neither I nor my Gurdaspur counterpart gave any permission to hold this camp,†Bhalla said.
The incident comes days after 11 women died and 34 were reported critical after undergoing “faulty” sterilisation surgeries at a government-organised family planning camp in Bilaspur district of Chhattisgarh.
(With PTI inputs)