She had been in a vegetative state after her rape in 1973 by the hospital’s ward boy
Less than a week after International Nurses Day, Aruna Shanbaug, former junior nurse at KEM hospital, finally breathed her last on May 18, 2015.
67-year old Shanbaug had been brain-dead and in a vegetative state since 27 November 1973, when she was sexually assaulted by a ward-boy who also choked her with a dog-chain. This cut off blood supply to the brain, resulting in brain stem contusion and injury to her cervical cord, which also left her cortically blind. She was artificially kept alive by doctors and nurses at Mumbai’s KEM Hospital.
Shanbaug was diagnosed with a bout of pneumonia a week before her demise and was admitted in the medical intensive care unit (MICU). Though the hospital had communicated that she was recovering and all her other medical parameters were fine, she suffered a sudden attack on the day of her death and could not be saved.
Shanbaug’s case had posed many uncomfortable questions about euthanasia and right to life, about the right of hospitals and healthcare institutes to block resources for patients who stood no chance of recovery. Her demise will probably raise all these questions once again and hopefully lead to a more humane solution, within the legal system, for dealing with patients like Shanbaug as well as taking steps to protect the nursing fraternity from such incidents in the future.
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