Faisal Fareed
Daijiworld Media Network - Lucknow
Lucknow, Nov 7: More trouble is in store for health officials in Uttar Pradesh. Initial reports after the CBI raid on 10 eye hospitals revealed a clandestine arrangement between doctors and NGOs for siphoning away funds meant for blindness eradication in the state.
The most startling revealations being that half of the cataract surgeries as claimed by the health department never took place. The fact emerged after the documents seized. The state already had witnessed gory murder of three senior health officials including Chief Medical Officers (CMO) Dr VK Arya and Dr BP Singh and one DyCMO Dr YS Sachan who was murdered inside jail at Lucknow. One former CMO of Lucknow Dr AK Shukla is already facing criminal charges for dwindling
away funds under blindness eradication programme during his tenure.
On Saturday CBI raided 10 eye hospitals in Lucknow. Documents pertaining to the cataract eradication, a flagship programme under NTHM were seized. After examination it was revealed that 50 per cent of the operations shown in the record of the said hospitals had never taken place, while several people did not exist. Lucknow has a budget of over Rs two crores for the blindness eradication programme. The programme involves free cataract surgeries and spectacles to the needy. Nearly 5000 cataract operations were reported but half of them were found to be fake. The beneficiary was fictious while payment was siphoned away. For the free spectacles the doctors even charged money from the patient.
The raids were conducted at Pradeepti Foundation Eye Hospital run by Hemant Kumar, Sumitra Clinic run by A K Bansal, Mansarovar Netra Hospital in Hazratganj, Swaroop Kunj Society s hospital (CN Netralaya) in Gomati Nagar and Brahma Shree Eye Hospital of Gomati Bahudesiya Sansthan in Kanpur Road. Raids were also conducted at Jan Kalyan Eye Hospital in Indiranagar, Pashupati Eye Hospital of Gramin Education and Welfare Society in Bakshi Ka Talab, Prakash Netra Kendra of Dr Shobhit Chawla in Gomiti Nagar, Dharmarth Chikatsalya of Harbhajan Kripa Devi Trust in Naka and Arogya Dham at VIP road in Alambagh.