Hundreds get maimed hands while working with unsafe machines in Rajasthan | Jaipur News

JAIPUR: Sitaram was elated when he bought a thrasher machine recently. But the 62-year-old farmer from Thanagazi in Alwar district was devastated when he sustained a grievous hand injury while operating this machine. Kesrar Dev, 48, a farmer in Jhunjhunu district, sustained a similar injury on December 4 when his old thrasher machine drew his hand inside.
In the past two years, nearly 941 people, mostly farmers and labourers using machines with blades and rollers, have rushed to SMS Hospital in Jaipur carrying their mutilated or b adly injured hands and fingers. The rise in such cases prompted the state government to set up a separate department for hand surgeries at this hospital last month.

Machines causing such dreadful injuries to people’s hands are thrashers, sugarcane juice machines, kutti machines, wood cutters, stone cutters, and glass cutters. The hand surgery un it of SMS Hospital has prepared a list of the 941 people who suffered such injuries over the past two years. The list, a copy of which is with TOI, has details of individual cases such as name, age, profession, the machine responsible for the injury, and the treatment provided.
The hand surgery unit of the hospital currently handles 5 to 8 hand trauma cases in the emergency department daily. About 60-70% cases are handled at the OPD, as per the documents of the hospital’s orthopaedic department sent to the stategovernment while advocating a separate hand surgery department. The order for setting up a separate department for repair and reconstruction of severed and damaged hands was issued on December 7, 2022. The hospital’s hand surgery unit has been functioning under its orthopaedics department since 1982.
The harvesting season witnesses a rise in hand trauma cases to the hospital, keeping the doctors busy at the OTs for almost three months. Now, even though the harvesting season has ended, such cases are coming in as people keep getting injured by machinessuch as stone cutters, glass cutters, and sugarcane juice machines with rollers. The doctors have raised the issue of the safety of limbs and termed these machines unsafe.
“If a person loses concentration while working on such machines, they get injured. Many of them develop disability. Engineers associated with the manufacturing of such machines should ensure safet y of the users at the design stage. All these injuries are preventable,” said Dr DS Meena, senior professor of orthopaedics at SMS Hospital and an expert in hand surgeries.
As per SMS Hospital’s documents, hand injuriesconstitute 35 to 40% of all orthopaedic emergencies at the hospital. “Hand injuries are seen mainly in poor labourers and workers, who are often the sole breadwinners of their families. In cases of their resulting disability, their families are badly hit. We perform surgeries to give functionality to the se vered or injured limbs so that the person can keep working,” said Dr Meena.
Dr Sanjay Saini, a resident doctor keeping an eye on each patient undergoing hand surgery at the hospital, said, “Patients with hand injuries come here from different parts of the state. We operate 7-8 hand injury cases daily. ”