A 33-Year-Old Youth Dies Due to lack of medical facilities at the Health Centre in Canacona

This may not be the first case wherein the victim had to lose his life due to the lack of medical facilities and doctors in the Public Health Centre in Goa. Most of the health centres situated in the rural and semi-urban areas do not have the basic medical facilities or the doctors to handle the serious cases and by the time patient reaches to the GMC or District Hospitals most of the times succumb to the injuries.

In one such case that took place in Canacona, a 33-year-old Ranjit Singh died on his way to Margao District Hospital when the Public Health Centre situated in Canacona was not able to provide the proper medical attention due to the lack of doctors and trauma centre at the Canacona Community Health Centre.

According to the sources, 33-year-old Krishna was attached by one his co-worker at Palolem due to which he received a serious head injuries and started bleeding profusely,  he was rushed to the Health Centre in Canacona just to find out that the doctors were not available on duty and there was no trauma ward to take care of such cases. He then was shifted to Margao Hospicio where doctors declared him brought dead.

According to the report published by the local daily The Goan, Ranjit Hari Singh, a 33-year-old waiter from Himachal Pradesh, was allegedly attacked by his co-worker, Nima Krishna Tamang of Nepal, behind a beach restaurant at Palolem in the wee hours of Tuesday. 

The complaint in this regards was filed by the owner of the shack Havana Club with the Canacona police station in which he stated that some of his staff residing behind the restaurant had woken up to the sounds of a man shouting in pain at about 2.45 am. The staff then ran into the direction of the man’s screams and found Singh badly injured, bleeding profusely and reeling in pain.      

Singh claimed he had been struck with some object by Tamang, who was nowhere to be seen. The victim was then rushed to the Canacona Community Health Centre (CHC), but was referred to the Hospicio Hospital at Margao, where he was declared dead on arrival. Canacona police were then alerted of the death. 

According to the Herald Goa, the victim was struck with the wooden plank by the accused who then managed to escape from the scene taking victim’s mobile and cash, but that mobile phone only became the reason of getting the accused behind the bars within six hours time, said the sources in Canacona police.

The saddest thing here is that the Canacona Health Centre neither has a trauma centre nor doctors to handle such serious cases and he had to be shifted to the Hospicio Hospital in Margao and the time taken in the shifting became the cause of the death of a victim, said the sources. If the Canacona health centre happens to have the facilities, the victim could have survived the attack.

This is the scenario across the state, none of the health centres has the facilities of Trauma centres and if at all some have developed it, then the doctors are not available on duty. It means only one thing that, people staying away from the main cities are not safe enough as they do not get the medical facilities in the case of an emergency.

It may be recalled that In one of the recent cases of an accident on Mapusa Panaji highway the victim was first taken to the Mapusa District Hospital and due to the lack of the doctors he had to be shifted to the Goa Medical College where he died.