Doctors at a community health centre in Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur Dehat provided treatment to victims of a road accident under the flashlight of their mobile phones during a power cut on Thursday, despite the availability of two large generators at the facility.
Viral videos from Sikandra Community Health Centre show the doctors attending to patients as the medical staff hold mobile phones to provide light, after the power went off.
Sources said the facility had two functional generators but the systems were not put to use, leading the doctors to continue treating people under inadequate lighting conditions.
The patients were victims of a horrific road accident in Sikandra, which killed two labourers and left 13 people injured, the sources added.
Kanpur Dehat Chief Medical Officer Arun Kumar Singh said a probe has been launched into why the generators and inverter systems were not put to use.
“The community health centre has two generators and an inverter system in the emergency, labour and OPD (out patient department) rooms. I spoke to a doctor there. He claimed the inverter had stopped working for a brief period and was later fixed… There are all (power back up) facilities there…,” he said.
Mr Singh also said the power lines in Sikandra are undergoing repair work, due to which the electricity supply is likely to be disrupted every few hours.
(With inputs from Arun Agarwal)
