Patient leaps to death from hospital after testing positive for HIV

A 40-year-old patient leapt out of the third floor of Bowring Hospital in Bangalore, hours after he was tested positive for HIV.

Police said Srinivas, a native of Arsikere in Karnataka’s Hassan district, was admitted to the hospital last week as he had been ailing for some time. Subsequently, he tested positively for HIV during the laboratory tests conducted on him.

But, during the early hours of Thursday, Srinivas is believed to sneaked out of his ward, broken open the lock of the emergency gate, which leads to the corridor on the third floor of the hospital building. He has jumped from the third floor of the building to end his life, police said.

Srinivas apparently gave no indication of his plans to end his life to his wife, who was nursing him till late on Wednesday night.

The body of Srinivas was lying outside the hospital for more than ten hours after the incident with the police giving various reasons for the delay in removing the body. The Bowring Hospital’s police outpost is barely at a stone throw’s distance from the spot where the dead body of Srinivas was lying.

Meanwhile, the suicide of Srinivas, a HIV positive patient, has also presented a unique problem to the staff of the forensic department, which has been entrusted with the task of performing a post-mortem.

The absence of clinical facilities at the hospital for performing a post mortem on a HIV/AIDS patient has become a source of serious concern for the forensic department staff at the hospital. “We run into high risks while conducting post-mortem on HIV/AIDS cases as the body is cut open and we are exposed to fluids and blood. Our staff needs to be cautious while working on the post-mortem”, a doctor said.

However, the Hospital is not even in a position to deny conducting a post-mortem on the deceased. For, the police register all such cases of unnatural deaths and a post-mortem has to be conducted in accordance with provisions of law.