Two days after a young man died at Nair hospital after he was sucked in by the MRI machine, while carrying an oxygen cylinder in the MRI room on a hospital staffer's instructions, the city continues to react with horror to this tragedy. Reactions have been pouring in about the state of government hospitals, the negligence by staffers and why exactly was a visitor asked to carry a cylinder into an MRI room. The fallout of this incident continues to reverberate through Mumbai. Yesterday, we highlighted how with the Nair hospital's MRI machine shut down, patients are scrambling for scans, but only two out of the city's 16 peripheral hospitals have MRI machines. The waiting time at KEM is an unbelievable seven months.

Other hospitals too are stretched to maximum capacity, and patients have to wait for months for an MRI. In some hospitals, there is not enough space for an MRI machine, while in others have more than one, but only one if functioning. It is only this death that has thrown the spotlight on the problem. One cannot wait for a calamity to start paying attention and fixing lacunae and shortfalls. These hospitals should have been equipped with MRI machines and malfunctioning MRIs should have been fixed or replaced by new ones. The multi-specialty hospitals need to count on MRIs as part of basic infrastructure.