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Kalmani, paralysed neck down following a road accident in the US in 2002, has, however, created a peculiar situation for hospital authorities — they say they would treat Kalmani at the hospital till the time his relatives come. Only, as hospital medical superintendent Dr Jagdish Prasad said, they refuse to come. “We contacted his family members but they told us that we may dump him anywhere,” Dr Prasad said, “but they were not interested in coming.”
Kalmani, 33, comes from a village in Koppal district in north Karnataka, some 500 kilometres from Bangalore. His father is a farmer there, and mother, Vidyawati, a housewife.
Dr Prasad said the resident commissioner of Karnataka had contacted him and had promised to make arrangements for Kalmani’s family to travel to the Capital. “We requested him to help the family come here,” Dr Prasad said. “We expect the family at the hospital by Monday.”
Dr Prasad said Kalmani’s condition had worsened on Friday, when he was shifted from the general ward to the ICU. A quadriplegic, Kalmani also has hypothyroidism, type-two diabetes, chronic urinary infection, depression, chronic abdominal pain with gastroparesis, and profound blood pressure variation.
Help from friends
Kalmani’s friends in the US have worked hard to keep him there and provide medical care for him for the last six years — until his visa expired recently. “His bills have piled up. He was travelling (through Nashville, Tennessee) when he had the accident. He has no family here. I saw him in the hospital on May 3 (2002), three days after the accident. It was shocking,” a friend and distant relative wrote in a May 23, 2002 newsletter for Saibaba devotees.
A friend from Karnataka, Basavaraj Mudenur, along with two others, started an online forum to support Kalmani’s treatment and stay in the US.
“Well-wishers, the government and various social organisations have made arrangements for his hefty hospital expenditure,” Basavaraj wrote in an appeal for help in June 2002. “He was not entitled to any disability insurance since he was not employed anywhere. This teaches a lesson to every one of us not to take a chance of staying in the US without medical insurance when on an H1B visa.
“We considered taking Manju to India but his health conditions, hospital regulations, airline limitations and cost of air-lifting him to India prevented us…. It is also very difficult to bring his family from India.” According to estimates provided by his friends, it cost approximately US $5,000 per month to take care of Kalmani in the US. He was discharged from the Atlanta hospital on March 3, and brought to Safdarjung two days later. Dr Prasad said he would also inform DGHS about the case.
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