JHANG, Aug 29: A mentally and physically handicapped boy in his early teens died after remaining unconscious for eight days, lying unattended on the lawns of the district headquarters hospital.

Edhi Foundation sources who made burial arrangements of the unclaimed body said the right foot of the 13-year-old boy was cut from the middle, and excessive bleeding from the wound might be the cause of his death. A routine stitching and dressing of the wound could have saved the boy’s life, they added.

Reports said the boy was found screaming in pain, lying under the shed of a shop, in front of the outer gate of the emergency ward of the hospital. Some passersby took the injured boy to the emergency ward, where the doctor on duty refused to attend the patient on the grounds that the matter should first be reported to police.

HRCP’s district coordinator spoke to the police officials concerned but they also refused to intervene.

Meanwhile, the injured boy kept lying semi-conscious under a tree in the lawns of the hospital’s emergency ward with flies and other insects infecting his wound. People visiting the ward kept feeding the injured boy with leftovers out of compassion to keep him alive. But neither the doctors at the hospital, nor the the so-called human rights activists could do anything to mitigate the boy’s misery which at last ended when death intervened.

The HRCP coordinator told Dawn that the doctors’ apathy had caused such many other incidents at the hospital.

The DHQ doctors in general and particularly those posted at the emergency ward had a track record of letting people die untreated, he said. In spite of being found guilty in inquiries, the doctors had never been brought to the book, he added. The coordinator has demanded a probe into the matter and stern action against those responsible for the boy’s death.