Diwali injuries received at PGIMER Chandigarh
On the occasion of Diwali 2019, fifteen patients came to the Advanced Eye Centre PGIMER with eye injuries due to firecrackers. There were seven females and 8 males; seven were children. 5 had injuries in both eyes. It was hard to believe that out of the 15 injuries; 7 people who were just bystanders and not lighting the cracker themselves were injured.
Four out of the 15 had serious open globe injuries which had to be operated upon and out of these three were children (all girls). Half of these patients were from the TriCity are and half from adjoining states of Himachal, Punjab and Haryana.
Five patients reported in Advanced Trauma Centre OPD with burn injuries on Diwali. All patients except one have burn injuries on hands with 10-20 % burns. All are stable.
One patient name Vijay, 15 years got cracker burst in hand. His hand need to be amputated due to severe hand injury. All patients are being provided needed help
We feel it was a comparatively safer Diwali this year as compared to the the last three years. There is significant reduction in the numbers of injury affected patients to almost half due to better public awareness by media and steps taken to by Government as well as Judiciary to reduce the duration of crackers bursting to two hours.