KATHMANDU, Aug 18: Doctors at Bir Hospital have said they are troubled by the large number of visitors coming to meet Ganga Maya Adhikari, who is on fast-unto-death since last Thursday.

Instead of persuading Adhikari to end her hunger strike, some visitors encourage her to continue it, they alleged.

Every day, dozens of civil society members and representatives from several human rights organizations reach Bir Hospital to meet Adhikari to express solidarity with her demands.

Ganga Maya, the widow of late Nanda Prasad Adhikari, has resumed her fast-unto-death from Thursday last week. She has been shifted to the intensive care unit (ICU) on account of her deteriorating health.

Doctors have put Adhikari on saline drip since Tuesday and have been trying to persuade her to allow them to insert a central venous catheter, which is also called central line.

A central line is inserted in the arm or chest through the skin into a large vein, from which medicines, fluids or total parenteral nutrition (TPN) is provided over a long period of time. TPN supplements daily nutrition requirements.

"Sometime she allows us to put the central line but after seeing some visitors she does not let us use the line," Dr Manen Prasad Gorkhali, who has been attending to Adhikari, complained.

A doctor alleged that mostly human rights activists and civil society members prod her to continue her hunger strike.

However, Dr Bhupendra Basnet, director at the hospital, claimed that Adhikari took medicines and allowed doctors to insert saline drip following the request from human rights activists. He denied the allegation that rights activists encouraged her to continue hunger strike.

Demanding action against those responsible for the death of her son Krishna Prasad, she had staged hunger strike for 360 days, which she ended last year following five points deal with government.

Her son Krishna Prasad was murdered in Chitwan in June 2004 by Maoist insurgents, who accused him of being a police informant.

Adhikari had been staying at Bir Hospital even after she ended her yearlong hunger strike last year. Her husband Nanda Prasad died on September 22, 2014 in the course of his fast-unto-death. His body still lies at the morgue of the central police forensic laboratory at Maharajgunj.

 
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• ganga maya
 
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