An Interesting Occurance

Today upon arrival at the hospital two other volunteers and I were surprised to find the scene full of police decked out in preparation for a riot. We entered the ER to try to figure out what was happening. My first thought was that there was some sort of bomb threat made to the hospital. The ER doctor told us that someone had "expired." This was strange I thought, we are working in a hospital in Nepal. Don't people "expire" here alot? Actually a young woman about 20 years old had died either last night or this morning. I wrote about her in one of my previous posts. She was the woman who had an ovarian cyst removed. Then she had a second operation (which I scrubbed in on and have pictures of) because of complications from the first operation. She had a perforated bowel which was leaking into her abdominal cavity which caused an infection. While touring the hospital I saw her a few hours before her second operation. She looked like she was in immense pain and her abdomen was extremely distended. later that day I watched her second surgery. A few days later she is dead. This is a very strange thing. It's very strange to be able to flip through my camera and see her laying on the operating table: alive. Back to today: as the day continued more and more riot police arrived at the hospital. They were coming because of the death of this woman. They were there incase a riot started due to this woman's death. I was fully confused, and still am. Judging by the amount of police that were there (maybe 50-60 by the time we left) they must have been expecting a full scale riot. But why would people riot? Yes, a young woman died due to surgical complications that may have been preventable. But isn't one of the known risks of surgery death? At a hospital people are inevitably going to die. Had her death leaked to the papers? Do people think that modern medicine will save everyone? Anyway, it was all quite strange. As the day went on more and more police arrived and the scene became increasingly strange. The other two volunteers and I stationed at Manmohan decided to leave. A few people recommended we leave the scene too, just incase it got ugly. Anyway I am still trying to figure the whole thing out. I am planning on looking through the newspapers today and tomorrow to see if I can figure it out a little more.