Sirsa health officials seal ultrasound machine

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Sirsa, July 7

Officials from the Health Department sealed an ultrasound machine of Aastha Hospital situated on Dabwali road on Monday evening.

A team constituted by Civil Surgeon Dr Surender Nain under Deputy Civil Surgeon Dr Viresh Bhushan went to Aastha Hospital on Monday evening and sealed an ultrasound machine. Though neither Dr Nain nor Dr Bhushan responded to calls made on their mobile phones, SDM Paramjit Singh Chahal confirmed the action taken by the health authorities.

He said the Civil Surgeon had sealed the machine suspecting that the hospital was using invasive techniques that were unauthorised.

Dr Rajnish Narula, owner of Aastha Hospital, however, alleged the health authorities had been harassing him and maligning his reputation for ulterior motives.

Dr Narula alleged doctors in Sirsa know how the health authorities in Sirsa have been functioning over the past few months and what “ulterior motives” meant.

“I have given an undertaking to the health authorities that no tests on any pregnant women were being performed at this centre at all. I use the ultrasound machine for routine investigations. However, the health authorities have been deliberately harassing me by maligning my reputation repeatedly,” he alleged.

Rubbishing allegations of using invasive techniques, Dr Narula said though registered for IVF technology, his centre had never done a procedure of test tube baby for which invasive technology can be used since 2013.

He said separate licenses for invasive and non-invasive licences came into force after 2014 only. “Had I any such need, I could have easily obtained a licence for invasive technology,” Narula maintained.

Repeated calls to Dr Nain and Dr Bhushan for their version were left unanswered. Even text messages sent on their mobile phones remained unanswered till the filing of this report.

“Plz call cs (civil surgeon) for any statement,” was the brief SMS Dr Bhushan sent to The Tribune after repeated calls. Later, Dr Nain also called The Tribune to tell that the machine has been sealed on a written complaint.

“We have called an engineer from Siemens, the makers of the ultrasound machine, for decoding and retrieving data,” he said. Dr Nain rubbished allegations of ulterior motives in the sealing of the machine.