This Article is From Mar 15, 2011

Tussle over labourer on life support

New Delhi: Doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) are grappling with a situation in which relatives of a paralysed patient want to take him from the hospital to an almost certain death.

Counsellors say while his family may have convinced the patient too to agree to end his suffering, and add that there is little they can do in such a case.

For more than a month, Puttu Lal has been battling to stay alive at the AIIMS trauma centre in Delhi.

The 45-year-old labourer from Uttar Pradesh was paralysed after he fell down while unloading cement bags. He's now on a ventilator.

Puttu Lal can speak but hasn't done so in the last couple of days; he, however, reacts to questions by shaking his head. Doctors say he can never stand up or be able to walk again.

Lal's brothers, all of them labourers, have spent close to Rs 3000 to come to Delhi to look after him.

But with no earnings for over a month, and their own families to look after, they now want to go back home and take Lal along knowing well that he wouldn't survive if taken off the ventilator.

"I don't care if he can or can't breathe; we will take him from here. Even if he dies while being brought down from the top floor to the gate," said Mahesh Chand, Puttu Lal's brother.

But so far, Lal seems to be in two minds.

When asked if he wants to go home he nods his head. But when told being taken off the ventilator may prove fatal, he stares blankly.

Doctors don't approve of what Lal's brothers want, but say they have little choice if Lal agrees to leave the hospital.

"We cannot be party to such a decision. If he was not on a ventilator we would have no problem letting him go, but since he is on a ventilator we would say no," said M C Misra, Head of the AIIMS trauma centre.

Lal is a widower and has two young children who are being cared for by their grandmother. His brothers have clearly said they cannot look after his children.

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