Akash Gochhait

Marxist doctor. IMT

[Jorge Martin ☭ @marxistJorge]

Complete lunacy. UK is now taking on a job not even Trump is prepared to do. Backing a reactionary feudal monarchy in its attempt to crush the people of Yemen.

Never mind the fact that attacking the Houthis WILL "disrupt trade and energy supplies" leading to higher prices.

[Akash Gochhait @bnag2512]

Same in India

[Keasar @KeasarNor]

Stalinists today are more than happy to ally with the bourgeoisie and spread slander about other communists when their own parties decline in popularity.

[Keasar @KeasarNor]

Stalinists today are more than happy to ally with the bourgeoisie and spread slander about other communists when their own parties decline in popularity.

[Revolutionary Communist Party @CanadaMarxists]

Fall recruitment campaign: Toward 1,000 communist organizers! https://t.co/oJA7z19xxU

[Kunal Kamra @kunalkamra88]

New York Mayor @ZohranKMamdani says he has no jurisdiction to cancel a private event at the Maddison Square Garden
hosted by the RSS where Chief Mohan Bhagwat will be addressing an audience.

In India’s Vibrant Democracy the assistant sub inspector (ASI) of the closest police station can get it done…

Step 1) - Inform Mohan Bhagwat that he will need police protection as people have threatened violence to protest against this event.
A group of 40 people (Currently Jobless) believe that Mohan Bhagwat’s speech would offend their religious beliefs.

Step 2) - Please ask Mohan Bhagwat to give the Police in writing that he won’t say anything controversial in anyway to anyone living/dead or unborn. The speech would not include Cultural, Religious & Political content. Nothing about Language, Food or any Historical Figure living/dead or unborn.

Step 3) - Acknowledge the deceleration. However on the date you’re currently scheduled we don’t have enough police recourses to control the protestors & ensure audience safety.

Step 4) - Statement by Mohan Bhagwat “The Miscreants have threatened the safety of our audience & the venue. They are wrongly accusing me of being Anti-National. However in the interest of audience safety the event has been postponed. We will get back with a fresh date at the earliest”

Step 5) - On every date the venue is available for the next 5 years
keep repeating “WE DON’T HAVE THE POLICE RESOURCES TO ENSURE AUDIENCE SAFETY”

[Akash Gochhait @bnag2512]

No compromise with BJP!
Down with the whole corrupt regime!
Modi-Shah must fall,
its the whole capitalist system that must fall!

[Akash Gochhait @bnag2512]

No compromise with BJP!
Down with the whole corrupt regime!
Modi-Shah must fall,
its the whole capitalist system that must fall!

[Revolutionary Communist International @revcomintern]

India’s Cockroaches rise: no retreat until Modi falls
https://t.co/RUUIFPUh59

[Joseph Attard @josephattard02]

The movement should not stop here! Modi, India’s ‘indestructible strongman’ has blinked. Why accept the resignation of just one corrupt and reactionary minister? Let the cockroaches overrun the whole country and bring down this entire rotten regime! 🪳

[Wellred Books Britain @WellredBritain]

What is imperialism?

https://t.co/MPDq0qFBiS

[Akash Gochhait @bnag2512]

@beantownbolshie Revolutionary salute comrade

[Akash Gochhait @bnag2512]

@realDonaldTrump You are a terrorist, you should not be allowed to speak

[Akash Gochhait @bnag2512]

@molly3smiles3 Because most of them are stalinists

[Akash Gochhait @bnag2512]

@rcipakistan Inquilaab zindabad!!

[Dr. Mukharjee Madivada @drmssm]

A tale of murder, medicine and sheer brilliance…

I can proudly credit much of my success in clinical practice to one teacher of mine: Dr. Rama Tharak Nath. His observations, teaching and language skills are unparalleled. Here is a great story where he single handedly solved an international crime recently:

The background:
****************
Dr. Tharak Nath is a neurologist who practices in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh. A young bride Kavitha (name changed) came to him recently with severe burning, tingling and numbness of hands and feet. He took her complete clinical history. Here are a few highlights he gathered:

The marriage:
**************
Kavitha got married in June. Her in-laws are truly cosmopolitan. The groom Shekar (name changed) is an engineer in the U.S. The sister-in-law, Raveena (pseudonym, again) is a doctor in the U.K. and was married to a health care professional. The in-laws, Subba Rao and Janaki, travel between India, US and the UK constantly.

The first episode:
*****************
Subba Rao and Janaki have a beautiful flat in Miyapur. After the marriage, all of the family got sick with gastroenteritis. They had stomach cramps, dragging discomfort in legs and hands.

They went to a corporate hospital in Hyderabad. Subba Rao, Shekar Raveena and Kavitha were okay but Janaki, the mother-in-law, developed weakness of limbs. Shekar went to the U.S., Raveena to the U.K. and Subba Rao was taking care of Janaki. Kavitha came back to Narasaraopet, a town near Guntur.

The unfortunate death:
***********************
Janaki deteriorated further and was admitted in the big hospital. She was diagnosed with Gillian Barre Syndrome, in which paralysis of both arms and legs occurs. Her daughter Raveena came back from the UK to take care of her. She got stabilised over a few days and was shifted to the room in the hospital. Raveena left to the UK again.

But as fate would have it, Janaki suddenly died in the room. The doctors thought that it could be pulmonary embolism, a sudden clot to the lungs.

The second episode:
*********************
All the family got together in Miyapur in the moments of grief. The new bride went from Guntur to be with her husband in the distressing time. They were performing the rituals but didn’t expect what hit them next…

All of them got sick again. They went to another corporate hospital and were treated for gastroenteritis. The water in their flats was examined and found to have E.Coli, a bacterial pathogen. They were treated and sent home. Raveena left for UK, Shekar to the U.S., and Kavitha went back to Narasaraopet, Guntur.

Enters the saviour:
******************
But Kavitha was suffering from severe neural pains in her limbs. She was sure that she will die, and she insisted that she be taken to Dr. Rama Tharak Nath. She was taken to him promptly and he examined her thoroughly and heard what she had to say. He asked her a lot of questions.

The Vital Clue:
***************
What was not obvious to many doctors, Dr. Tharak Nath identified in less than 15 minutes. He noticed inconspicuous white lines on the nails of Kavitha. These are called Mee’s Lines, he later told me. They are the diagnostic features of a poisoning from Arsenic, the King of poisons. Napoleon was suspected to have died from Arsenic poisoning.

The follow up:
**************
Dr. Tharak Nath got his patient tested for Arsenic. He also asked the husband in the US, and the father-in-law in Hyderabad to get tested for Arsenic. It was an uphill task for the NRI to get tested for Arsenic, but he managed it in the end, educating his unsuspecting doctors about Mee’s lines and using Dr. Tharak’s suspicions as props.

The lab results showed only one thing: My professor was absolutely right. It was Arsenic that troubled all of them.

#MiyapurMurder
#ArsenicPoisoning
#MedicalMystery
#MedTwitter

1/2

[Tonmoy Goswami @tonmoygo]

In 2004, my dad filed a case of medical negligence against one of India's most powerful hospitals viz. Batra Hospital, Delhi and Padmashree awardee cardiologist Dr Upendra Kaul.

Case was filed in the state consumer court, Delhi & my dad asked for a compensation of Rs. 80 lakh. (80,00,000 INR)

After 11 years, in 2015 my dad passed away, without getting justice.

My senior citizen widowed mother decided not to give up.

TLDR; we won the case after 19 long years, but what transpired is a story that teaches you that, in India, it's better if you can settle outside the court.

But, sometimes it's not about the compensation, settlement, or winning a case; it's about making sure the perpetrators are taught a lesson so that the negligence never gets repeated. It's also about closure.

Here's the story of how a common middle-class Indian family from Assam fought a mighty & powerful establishment in their own city (Delhi) for 19 long years and brought the hospital to its knees:

----

It's a long story, but I'll try to keep it short.

In 2004, my dad went to Delhi alone for a routine heart check-up & returned with a pace-maker in his chest.

Escalated too quickly? Exactly my mother's reaction when he called from Delhi asking her to immediately board a flight from our hometown in Guwahati, Assam.

Long story short:
1. Dad went for a diagnostic study called EPS. Batra hospital took consent for it.
2. Protocol is that if EPS study came abnormal, RFA is suggested as the next step as a treatment after discussing with the patient. Patient needs to provide a fresh consent for RFA.
3. However, if the pathways are too close, RFA is risky & is not recommended as it can be fatal.
4. EPS shows if pathways are close or not.

My dad's EPS showed that pathways are close.

In spite of that, Batra hospital and its cardiologists went ahead and performed RFA:
a. Without consulting with the patient or relatives.
b. Without taking fresh consent as it's a separate procedure.

Things then went south real quick.

----

Due to closeness of pathways, obvious complications occurred & my dad's life was in danger. The only way to save him? Put a pace-maker in his chest immediately!

So that's what they did: put a temporary pace-maker while informing my mother to immediately catch a flight to Delhi so that they can put a permanent pace-maker the next day.

And you would think, the ordeal would end there? Cute.

----

My parents returned home after a few days & dad was supposed to recover.

But instead, we saw his chest area getting swollen day by day. We freaked out and consulted a cardiologist in Guwahati. And they confirmed the worse: the pace-maker was not installed properly and one of the pipes pierced through his heart.

He needs an urgent emergency open-heart surgery to fix the pace-maker.

So, my family went through another few days of anxiety, stress and disbelief.

----

My dad, is known in our friends and family circles as someone who's always been an super-active person; always engaged in some form of work; be it gardening, fixing electronics, repairing things around the house. My mother used to call him the perfect engineer since he could fix anything compared to the other two engineers in the family viz. me and my sister who were lazy compared to him.

The series of surgeries and a pace-maker did slow my dad down, but couldn't kill his spirit. However, we could see the difference. We would pace himself while climbing stairs etc.

It would hurt us a lot. And him too.

So he decided to drag Batra Hospital to the consumer forum.

----

Our family advocate resides in Kolkata and he agreed to take the case up pro-bono. We assumed it'll be an open and shut case. And since it's consumer court, we assumed it will be quick justice.

Oh, we are so wrong. So so wrong.

My dad attended every single hearing of the case from 2004 till 2015 when he passed away. He used to take a flight from Guwahati while booking a ticket for our advocate from Kolkata. Then there was cost of accommodation in Delhi.

Attending these hearings was no cheap affair. When you add up each hearing over 19 years...it quickly adds up to a large amount.

----

On many occasions, someone from hearing judge bench would be absent so nothing would happen. You get a new date, months in the future.
Or the opposite party advocate would be absent, or cite lame excuses to stall the proceedings. E.g. once the opposite advocate asked the court for a new date since his colleague was stuck in traffic and couldn't reach the court. And we were given a new date!

Imagine the frustration.

And this happened over 11 years till my dad passed away.

----

When dad passed away, Batra Hospital might have heaved a sigh of relief. Can't blame them; they had not yet met my mother.

She decided to continue the fight. That's when I started taking active participation as well.

Let's take a pause and understand why it took so many years?

1. It's a medical case and the judges felt inadequate without proper medical advice.
2. The opposite party was a Padmashree awardee celebrated cardiologist and the hospital was founded by people walking the corridoors of power.
3. Deliberate delays of absenteeism, withdrawing evidence from court etc.

The court asked an independent medical board for their recommendations. The medical board tilted in our favour for obvious reasons: the medical negligence was apparent.

----

Batra hospital tried to confuse the judge's bench by claiming that consent was taken for RFA. When asked to provide evidence, they would repeatedly provide the EPS consent form. This would delay the case and do nothing else.

They also never submitted the EPS traces to the court. They claimed that the traces were provided to my family and they have no record in their system. Which was utterly bullsh*t because we didn't have the traces.

They didn't provide the traces as it would immediately shut the case. Traces will show that the pathways were close, so RFA was not warranted.

Unable to provide consent form & Unable to provide traces went against them.

And in 2018, we won the case in the Delhi state consumer forum. The court awarded 10 lakh (10,00,000 INR) compensation with 7% simple interest from the date of filing the case.

While it was nothing compared to the asked compensation of 80 lakhs, we were happy as it was never about the money anyway.

But our happiness was short-lived, as Batra Hospital decided to appeal the judgement in the higher court: The National Consumer Forum.

----

And so we were back to square one. I promised mom that even if it takes another 14 years, I'll continue the fight.

And so we did. Date after date, hearing after hearing. Same BS all over again.

However, our advocate Mr. Neguive Ahmed is one of the best in the business. A senior citizen himself, he was so frustrated that he took it upon himself to turn Godmode on. I witnessed one of his argument session at court and he ruthlessly thrashed the opposing party left, right and center. He didn't even spare the bench & schooled them for taking forever to deliver a judgement.

This time, he was not going to let it continue for 10 more years. So he pushed at every hearing for shorter dates.

And in 2023, we won again!

Batra was brought to its knees. They can appeal again, yes; but it has to be the Supreme Court.

And after getting their a** whopped twice in a row for 19 years, they didn't have the courage to approach Supreme Court. And finally gave up.

----

It begs a question: Did we really win? And even if we did win technically, at what cost?

I would say, it comes at a price of your mental wellbeing, financial expense, a lot of frustration, shameless advocates and it leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

Batra's advocate is so shameless, he allegedly told our advocate, "We have worked for so many years on the case, won't you give us something? Your client has won a hefty amount"

Bloody bloodsucker! You worked AGAINST us all these years and now you want 'something' for your 'service'?!

----

So, is justice delayed justice denied?

Definitely yes, my family is just happy that the case is over. But we are also happy to have never given up. I understand that it may not be financially possible for everyone to not give up on a long legal battle, but that's what they want: drown you into date after date so that one fine day, you simply give up because it starts looking futile.

If you can, persist. As my mom did and my dad would have.

Even if it's justice denied, it's justice nonetheless for the future patients.

It's like paying for the next person.

At least the next time they perform any surgery that requires consent, they will remember the Goswami family.

Thanks for reading.

[Akash Gochhait @bnag2512]

@autopsy_surgeon Chhhiii

[PIYUSH BHARTI @iampiyushbharti]

We had not expected such uncompassionate, reckless and cold attitude of institute towards him.
I request everyone, especially our colleagues and Seniors to please support my friend Dr Ashwini Singh in these times of adversity.(5/5)@mansukhmandviya @FAIMA_INDIA_ @FordaIndia

[Akash Gochhait @bnag2512]

@adityavnayak Feel like puking each time I see them speaking something. Full of Islamophobia, bigotry, hatred just put in sophisticated English. Also Marxists had some strangehold on history like seriously?