Sir JJ Hospital report details positive and negative aspects of handling 26/11-like tragedies and dealing with huge volume of casualties; report will soon be submitted to international medical journals

On the night of 26/11, the top brass of Mumbai's JJ Hospital received a message Be prepared for all eventualities, the impact is terrible.

Soon, all doctors were pulled out of their beds and those on leave were asked to resume duty. At the helm of affairs was Dr Pravin Shengare, the joint director of Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER) and former dean of JJ hospital.

Shengare and his team ensured that there were at least two doctors per patient. However, they had not anticipated that the hospital might not have blood of all groups in stock or that equipment required for surgery will malfunction. But that's exactly what happened that night at the hospital, reveals a yet-to-be-released report prepared by the hospital.

Positive findings
"When we realised we did not have stock of some rare blood groups, we immediately sent our teams to wake up people with the blood group who lived nearby and take their blood," said Shengare.

According to the report, parts of equipment needed for surgeries in the orthopaedic section were missing, while life-saving equipment showed technical errors. "Some ICU beds were vacant and hence we hadn't checked the equipment. Though we shuffled and handled emergency well, our advice to other hospitals would be to test all equipment," said Shengare.

Shortcomings
The absence of an Emergency Medical Services unit containing operation theatres (OTs), CT scans and ICUs, was felt sorely that night.

A senior doctor said, "If we had an EMS unit, patients needn't be shifted and important time is not lost." Added the doctor, "There were too many political visits which disturbed the patients and us. Politicians should be banned in the first few days or confined to one section."

Said Shengare, "The report will be ready soon. It will basically serve as a pointer on how to handle terror attacks of this nature. We will submit the report to international journals like Lancet or British Journal of Surgery or Annals of Surgery so we can share our experience with the rest of the world."

When asked about the report, Dr W B Tayade, director, DMER instructed us to obtain information from the hospital.