JULY 11: The recent suicide of a doctor doing a super-specialisation degree of Master of Chirurgie (surgery) at Nair Hospital has put a question mark over the attitude of the hospital administration towards its students.

Expressing shock at the hospital's indifference, members of the medical fraternity said the administration has not even ``reacted to the unfortunate incident.''

Express Newsline had reported that Dr Jagdish Hosur (31) committed suicide on July 3 following repeated rejections of his thesis papers. Six days later, the hospital administration has almost forgotten the matter.

Dr K D Nihalani, Dean of Nair hospital, said the body has been collected by the deceased doctor's relatives. However, she said she was unaware of the identity of the substance Dr Hosur had injected himself with. ``The Agripada police have said they will inform me about it,'' she added.

According to hospital sources, Dr N R Lalwani, head of department of plastic surgery under whom Dr Hosur was doing his thesis, is said to be a tough task master. They revealed that seven out of the ten doctors under her face problems in securing their thesis.

Most of them have to seek intervention of the Dean of Faculty or the Mumbai University's Vice Chancellor to get their papers cleared. For instance, Dr Hosur's colleague has already had to rewrite his paper five times.

Moreover, the hospital's department of plastic surgery has many other infrastructural limitations as there is no separate laboratory, and it does not possess animals required for experiments. Even the operation theatre is shared with the neurosurgery department. Doctor's cannot get sufficient clinical data as records are not maintained properly.

But what has upset doctors about the present incident is the fact that a letter of complaint lying with the Dean of Faculty elicited no action. The letter referred to the depression Dr Hosur was suffering from due to repeated rejections of his thesis. Three weeks after it was submitted, the doctor ended his life.

``Shouldn't the authorities take serious note of a complaint made by a student?'' asked sources. A couple of years ago, they said, a suicide by another doctor of the hospital similarly evoked no reaction from the hospital administration.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.