JAIPUR: Five elderly farmers from Kuchaman lay face down on SMS Hospital beds, their bodies still on doctors’ advice, but their minds gripped by terror. They had entered a govt hospital’s operating room in Kuchaman Monday hoping cataract surgery would clear their fading vision. Two days later, at SMS Hospital in Jaipur, they were fighting to save one eye from permanent vision loss.The patients — Ghasiram (64), Hiraram (73), Gokul (70), Meera Devi (58) and Narayani Devi (67) — were brought to SMS Hospital late Wednesday night after developing serious post-surgery infections. Doctors at Kuchaman govt hospital referred them to Jaipur after their operated eyes turned white and opaque when bandages were removed during follow-up treatment.“Here, the doctors told us there is no guarantee the vision will return,” said Dharam Pal, grandson of 73-year-old Hiraram.Attendants alleged carelessness by doctors at Kuchaman. Narayani’s nephew Jeevan Chaudhary alleged apathy in the govt healthcare system. “There is no accountability,” he said, recalling other medical tragedies in govt hospitals. “Recently, maternal deaths happened in several govt hospitals across the state and now such incidents are happening. My aunt and other four may lose vision of one eye; who will be responsible for it?” said Chaudhary.For Narayani Devi, the fear is not only of blindness but of losing her place in the fields that sustain her family. Her left eye was operated on. Now she lies face down in the female ophthalmology ward at SMS Hospital’s Charak Bhawan, following doctors’ instructions after emergency treatment to save her vision.“We grow moong, bajra and peanuts. This is the time I should be in the field,” she said. “If I lose sight in one eye, how will I work? I am already old, and the other eye is also weak. This will destroy my life.”Her family farms rain-fed land, with no assured source of irrigation. Every working hand matters. Every clear eye matters.Ghansi Ram (65) said he agreed to surgery only to see better and return to farming. Instead, he now speaks in a shaken voice, struggling to understand how hope turned into horror. “I went for surgery so I could see clearly again,” he said. “Now I am afraid I may lose sight in one eye.”Their ordeal began after the July 28 cataract surgeries. On Wednesday morning, they returned to the Kuchaman hospital for bandage removal. What should have been a moment of relief became a scene of panic. The patients could not see from the operated eyes. Doctors noticed the damage and arranged an ambulance to SMS Hospital.Nine people, including patients and attendants, travelled nearly three hours from Kuchaman to Jaipur in one ambulance. The other patients, Gokul and Meera Devi, have the same story to tell. For now, the five farmers wait in fear, not for a harvest, but for light.
