The hospital is where a person goes to have his/her health monitored during an illness or following an injury. For the most part, patients are well cared for in hospitals, but not all hospitals have stellar records concerning patient care. For example, a man who was hospitalized at a government facility in Chhattisgarh, India died following two days of being eaten alive by ants. The ants had been infesting the hospital, and surveillance footage showed that ants had been feeding on the man’s wounds before he died.
Last June, a 30 year old man was found lying unconscious outside of a hospital in Manendragarh. The man had been bleeding from his head and nobody bothered to come to the man’s assistance. Upon hearing about the injured and unconscious man, a local politician, Shyam Bihari Jaiswal, made arrangements to have the man treated for his injuries. After undergoing an initial exam at the hospital, the man was driven 50 kilometers to a government healthcare facility in order to receive treatment. Once reporters managed to track the man down to the government hospital, they discovered ants crawling all over his open wounds and around the injection site of his glucose drip. A human rights official claimed that the man had remained unconscious during his full twelve day stay at the hospital, including the two days before he died when ants were found infesting his wounds.
When doctors were confronted with this man’s conditions, the doctors claimed that a recent monsoon had brought the ants into the hospital. The doctors also claimed that they did not notice the ant infestation in the man’s room because they had to handle numerous other patients. The ants likely gravitated toward the man’s body because they were attracted to the sweet-tasting glucose that was being fed directly into the man’s bloodstream. Sadly, doctors were not able to locate any of the man’s friends or relatives.
Have you ever spotted an insect or spider within a healthcare facility?