4 AIIMS doctors injured in Yamuna Expressway crash stable
Dr Halam is one of the four AIIMS resident doctors, from the department of emergency, who were shifted to the trauma centre at around 9.30am on Sunday
It took her surgeon colleagues more than an hour to fix her dislocated hips and repair a deep gash on the face of Catherine Halam, a junior resident at New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).
Halam was one of the four resident doctors with AIIMS department of emergency who was shifted to the trauma centre at around 9.30am on Sunday, almost seven hours after their car crashed into a truck on the Yamuna Expressway.
Three of their doctor colleagues died in the accident that took place near Mathura, around 150km from Delhi.
“She is stable but her injuries are severe, so she would need to be in the hospital for some time… She also sustained facial fracture and a wound to her shoulder,” said Dr Rajesh Malhotra, the trauma centre chief who led the surgical team.
Jitendra Maurya, Mahesh Kumar, Abhinava Singh escaped with minor injuries but were kept under observation for a few hours.
All the doctors were bright students and were preparing for the post-graduate entrance examination while working as resident doctors in the emergency department, a source in the unit said, requesting anonymity as he was not authorised to speak to media.
The bodies of the three doctors were handed over to their families late Sunday evening. The family of senior resident Harshad Wankhede left for his hometown in Maharashtra. The final rites of 25-year-old Yashpreet Singh were to be performed in his native place in Punjab and Himbala Taneja was to be cremated in her hometown in Haryana, sources said.
The group was on way to Agra to celebrate the birthday of Wankhede, who had turned 35 a day earlier.