Two doctors
in India were temporarily released from their duties after a video surfaced of
them arguing while standing over a pregnant patient during an operation, their
hospital says.
Footage of
the incident, at the Umaid hospital in north Rajasthan, has been widely
circulated, causing outrage.
A senior
hospital official told the BBC that the woman and her baby are fine.
The source
of the leaked video is unclear, but the official confirmed that it came from
within the hospital.
Trading
insults
After the
video emerged online, many media reports claimed the woman pictured on the
operating table gave birth to a baby who did not survive.
But Dr
Ranjana Desai, the superintendent of Umaid Hospital in Jodhpur, said this was
inaccurate. "By the time I saw the video and conducted an internal
inquiry, the media had already reported that this baby had died," she told
the BBC.
A baby did
die, but not the one the media reported, she said. A few feet away, on another
operating table within the same room, a different woman gave birth to a
stillborn baby. "These two incidents are not linked," Dr Desai told
the BBC.
In the
video, which has been shared widely across media and online, the two doctors
can be heard slinging insults at each other in Hindi before arguing over
whether the patient had eaten before surgery.
Dr Desai
identified the two doctors as Dr Ashok Nanival and Dr Mathura Lal Tak.
She said
that the two doctors were not formally suspended, but had been released from
their duties at the hospital while they proceed with an internal inquiry.
Additionally, the hospital is in the process of collecting statements from
staff to find out who shot the video and how it came to be leaked.
The
Rajasthan High Court has ordered the hospital to submit a report, while they
proceed with a separate state level investigation into the incident.
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