With bandage on eye, docs protest

Samaan Lateef

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, August 10

Senior doctors of Kashmir today bandaged their one eye to protest against the killings and use of pellet guns on protesters in the ongoing unrest.

Heads of almost all departments of the associated hospitals of Government Medical College, Srinagar, and other senior doctors assembled here to attend the sit-in protest to demand an “immediate end to the use” of pellet guns on protesters.

“We have over 400 youth hit in their eyes in just one month. We stand for all those who have been killed and injured in Kashmir,” said Dr Sajad Majid Qazi, head of the ENT department of the GMC and general secretary of the Medical Faculty Association.

“We all are Insha here,” he said. Insha is a south Kashmir girl, who has been blinded in both eyes after being hit by pellets. She is admitted in the AIIMS, New Delhi.

At least 54 civilians have been killed and over 6,000 injured in the protests in Kashmir following the killing of Hizb commander Burhan Wani on July 8. At least 412 youth have been hit in their eyes by pellets and a majority of them are facing vision loss.

“What will be the future of these children? How can you get them into the mainstream? How can you rehabilitate them?” asked Dr Shehnaz Teng, head of the gynaecology department of the GMC, Srinagar.

She said it would be difficult to bring the blinded children into the mainstream.

Associate Professor, Ophthalmology, GMC, Dr Sajad Khanday called for an immediate end to the use of “brute force” on protesters. “It is incapacitating. Even if a person is blinded in one eye, his binocularity and resolution is lost. Medically, we may be able to restore their vision to some extent but the productive vision won’t come back,” Dr Khanday said.

Associate Professor, Surgery, GMC, Dr Iqbal Salim said the injured youth had been psychologically and physically left unfit. “Any person whose abdomen has been opened is rendered unfit for life,” Dr Salim said.