The health of Anna Hazare deteriorated on the seventh day of his fast on Monday, prompting the Pune-based State-run Sassoon General Hospital to set up a make-shift Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at the Yadavbaba Temple at Ralegan-Siddhi in western Maharashtra as a precautionary measure to monitor the Gandhian’s condition.
Owing to lack of intake of food for the past seven days, Anna is experiencing considerable fatigue. What is causing concern for a team of doctors attending on him is the fact that Hazare has lost as much as 4.7 kilograms of weight ever since began his fast on December 10. The creatinine levels in his urine have gone up markedly.
“As a precautionary measure, we have set up a make-shift ICU at the temple. We have all the equipment, including ventilator, ECG machine, multiple organ monitor and necessary drugs, to take care of emergency needs,” a senior doctor from the Sassoon Hospital stationed in his Hazare’s home village of Ralegan-Sinddhi said.
Hazare’s personal aide Suresh Pathare said that though the fasting activist’s creatinine level had gone up, his blood pressure and temperature were normal. This, he said, was despite the chilly weather prevailing in Ralegan Siddhi.
That Hazare has become very weak could be evidenced from the fact that he was supported by aides to walk to fasting stage from his temple room on Monday morning. Through the day, he was seen in a reclined position.
Notwithstanding the intense fatigue that he is suffering from, Hazare has made it clear that he would not break his fast unless and until Rajya Sabha passes the amended lokpal bill, lok Sabha endorses it and the President signs it into a law.
In the normal course, the amended lokpal bill was to have come up in Rajya Sabha on Monday. However, the upper House of Parliament did not deliberate on the select-vetted bill, owing to the death of Union labour and Employment Minister Sis Ram Ola. The legislation will now come up in Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Hazare hit back at his erstwhile team member Arvind Kejriwal for the latter’s comment that the amended lokpal bill was not good enough to send even a mouse to jail, by saying that why just a mouse, the legislation could ensnare even a lion.
“You are talking about mouse. I feel the amended lokpal is strong enough to trap even a lion,” Hazare said, while talking media persons at Ralegan Siddhi.Paying his homage to last year’s Delhi gang rape victim, Hazare said: “All women are our mothers and sisters. We should look at them in a similar manner”.
The erstwhile soldier also paid tributes to the martyrs of the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war and Ola on the occasion.