[ Indu Chukhu & Harshvardhan Pillai ]
ITANAGAR, 13 Jun: Dr Tadie Mra (30), a senior resident doctor at the Gujarat Cancer & Research Institute (GCRI), Ahmedabad, narrowly escaped Thursday’s Air India (A-I) plane crash.
Dr Mra is from Limeking in Upper Subansiri district and has been serving at the hospital for three years.
Speaking to this daily, Dr Mra informed that he was having his lunch at the undergraduate canteen of the GCRI where the fatal incident took place. It was 12:20 pm when he was having his lunch, after his duty shift was over. He informed that, during the lunch time, he got an emergency call informing that a child needed an ultrasound-guided biopsy.
“I thought of going back to my hostel and taking a shower as my medical dress had got stained during lunch time, but I didn’t do so. The last four minutes were very crucial for me. When I reached the daycare centre of the hospital, the fateful incident took place.”
“Initially I thought that the oxygen plant burst, but later got to know from people that a plane had crashed. It was confirmed when I saw the news.
“I was allowed to move inside the place of the incident as I was from the hospital and was seen in a medical apron,” Dr Mra said.
He added: “It is a regular scene for us to attend to casualties and death cases, but the Thursday incident has traumatised all of the medical fraternity in the hospital. Seeing 250 dead patients was not an easy experience for us; we were mentally traumatised and the mortuary was full yesterday.”
The operation took place till 6 pm, he informed.
Currently all the doctors residing in the affected quarters have been shifted to the old GCRI building.
Dr Mra was just 200 metres away from the site of the incident. He was the only doctor from Arunachal Pradesh who was residing in the resident doctors’quarters (superspecialist doctors’ area) where the plane crashed.
Dr Mra said that his colleague, a surgical oncologist’s mother, is missing since yesterday. He added that, had the incident taken place on Sunday, there would have been more casualties “because we are on our holiday that day.”
“It was during the working hours, when most of us are outside the quarters, that the incident took place,”he said.
“Had it been a Sunday, we could not have been able to handle the casualties. For that matter, if the plane had crashed into the hospital itself – which is just 20 metres from the quarters and the hostel – it would have been catastrophic,” he said.
The tragedy has prompted a national outpouring of grief and calls for a thorough investigation into the cause of the crash.
Four trainee doctors from the hospital are confirmed dead, and more than six doctors are reportedly dead.
