The Sewri hospital receives as many as 25,000 patients every year, increasing the risk of exposure for workers. File pic

In the past five years, at least 25 employees at the Sewri TB hospital have lost their lives to the deadly disease. Tragic as these deaths are, they could have been avoided if the hospital had just provided staffers with the protective N-95 masks that were made mandatory by the central government. After giving them inadequate protection, the hospital is now scrambling to mask its negligence, claiming that the allegations being levelled against it are baseless.