A four-day-old girl has died after being sent back and forth from one department of a state-run hospital to another in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly on Wednesday, prompting the government to initiate action against seniors doctors.
The infant’s family has alleged they were made to run from one wing of the Maharana Pratap Jila Sanyukt Chikitsalaya to another for more than three hours resulting in the death of their daughter.
Chief minister Yogi Adityanath ordered the suspension of Dr Kamlendra Swaroop Gupta, the chief medical superintendent (CMS) of the men’s wing of the hospital, on charges of negligence of duty.
“I have ordered suspension of CMS of Male Hospital Bareilly on the negligence of duty and have ordered for departmental proceedings against CMS of Women Hospital. Any insensitivity by Govt. officials will not be tolerated in #NewUP,” Yogi Adityanath tweeted on Wednesday night.
“The action was taken after a critically sick child was brought to Male Hospital, where sufficient paediatricians were available, but instead of stabilising the child and giving due treatment, he turned family away to Women Hospital. CMS of Women Hospital referred child back,” he said in another tweet.
Reports said the infant, who was born at a private hospital on June 15, developed difficulty in breathing after which her parents brought her to the government hospital in Bareilly.
The father of the infant, Yogendra, said said they first reached the outpatient department (OPD) of the hospital where a paediatrician examined his daughter. The paediatrician referred them to the adjoining women’s hospital, some 500 meters away, that houses a Sick Newborn Care Unit (SNCU).
However, when they took the infant to SNCU the doctor there asked them to return to the OPD. When they returned to the doctor in OPD, he asked them to take the child to the women’s hospital again. On his suggestion, Yogendra decided to return to the women’s hospital but by the time they reached the child was dead.
There is a severe shortage of government doctors in the country’s most populous state. Uttar Pradesh’s health minister Sidharth Nath Singh had informed the legislative council last year that there was a shortage of 7,348 doctors in government hospitals, against the 1:1,000 ratio recommended by the World Health Organization.