Srinagar, Aug. 21 -- The deaths of two women following routine procedures at a private hospital in Srinagar have shaken public confidence in healthcare and forced a reckoning with uncomfortable truths. These tragedies are not isolated incidents but symptoms of a deeper malaise: the unchecked expansion of private medical practice without adequate safeguards, and the blurred lines between public duty and private profit. When lives are lost in the course of interventions that are otherwise considered safe, the question is not whether complications can occur; they can, anywhere but whether systems exist to recognise, respond and prevent those complications from becoming fatal.

The reality is stark as the critical care and emergency support a...