Disasters do teach us: The Tamil Nadu Express derails

Suddenly the train stopped with a massive jerk. Dr Cherian peeped out of the only compartment remaining on rails. He jumped off shouting ‘Accident’. He saw Kesavan split in half, conscious, dying. He saw a young boy without a shoulder and bandaged it with his dead mother’s saree. A sardarni lay clasping the hand of her newly married and just dead husband.

As Dr Cherian took stock when he ran into a Hippy. From Dr Cherian’s questions, the hippy understood he was a doctor and called his four “White” friends to help.

They were in a small village Sirpur-Kagajnagar in Andhra Pradesh. Soon two empty trucks arrived to transport the wounded across torturous bumpy fields to a locked up Primary Health Centre (PHC). 

It was broken open only to find scant emergency supplies. The hippies collected the available instruments and cotton balls from pillows and sterilized them with boiling water. They offered their stock of morphine ampoules as anaesthetics. Dr Cherian started operating. 

12 surgeries including several amputations were performed. Later a special train with engine and a bogie arrived from the Nagpur Railway Division. “It was the first time that I was PROUD to be a Surgeon,” says Dr Cherian. Of the three anaesthetists traveling with him, one had a fractured cervical spine. They were transported to Nagpur Divisional Railway Hospital. 

After a hot bath and coffee, Dr Cherian remembered his lecture. He prepared the case notes of his patients and flew to Delhi, at the courtesy of Indian Airlines. Two seats were removed to accommodate the injured anaesthetist who travelled with a “Minerva Jacket”. At Delhi, Dr Cherian transferred the injured doctor to GB Pant Hospital and rushed to the conference. 

At the conference, Dr Cherian spoke about the accident. He also threw light on the “Largest series” of Paediatric Cardiac Surgeries performed in India by Southern Railway Hospital, Perambur on infants below 10 kg. Following this, Parliament took up the total lack of preparedness in handling accident emergencies. Shri Jaffer Sheriff stated that the day was saved only because the best doctor from Railways Hospital, Tamil Nadu, was available on the train. 

Help comes in varied forms - from hippies to truck drivers. Dr Cherian was traveling by train that day because he could not afford air travel and got a free pass as a railway employee. These factors were indeed fortunate for the unfortunate victims.