DMC holds quack guilty of death due to negligence

NEW DELHI: The Delhi Medical Council (DMC) on Wednesday ordered criminal action against a quack whose “treatment” resulted in the death of a patient in November last year.

The DMC, a statutory body that governs the practice of modern medicine in the state, said action should be initiated as per section 27 of the DMC Act that entails a fine of up to R20,000 and/ or three years in prison.

The hospital in which the patient was treated was also not registered with the Directorate of Health Services, Delhi. The hospital wound up its operations in January.

“The patient was treated by an unqualified person in an unregistered hospital and did not receive proper treatment, which led to his death,” said the DMC order. The man, who had pretended to be a doctor, had been practising medicine for almost 12 years in Delhi and was a member of the Indian Medical Association (IMA), a pan-india representative organisation of doctors, and the Indian Academy of Paediatrics (IAP), a renowned association of paediatricians.

A complaint against the said “doctor” was filed by the sister of the deceased, who is a paediatrician. Utpal Saikia, 45, had an undiagnosed liver disease. He went to a private hospital in Munirka around 2 pm on noticing blood in his vomit and stool. Within nine hours, the condition of the patient deteriorated and he was taken to Safdarjung hospi- tal, where he was declared dead on arrival at 2 am.

As per the post-mortem report, the death was a result of circulatory shock due to haemorrhage and excessive bleeding. “The patient was just put on a saline and given some antibiotics and pain medication. No diagnostic test was done to find the source of the bleeding, neither was any blood given to the patient,” said Dr Girish Tyagi, secretary, DMC.

Dr Mouchumi Saikia, the patient’s sister who practices medicine in Assam, was informed of her brother’s condition by the landlord who had taken him to the hospital. “At that time, we did not think it was a serious condition. An abdominal bleed, if managed, hardly kills anyone,” said Saikia.

“At that time, we came to Delhi, collected his body and and left. On reaching home, I realised that all the treatment was counter-indicative. He was not given any medicines for the vomiting and even the IV given is not suggested for the kind of fluid loss he had. Any doctor can tell you the treatment was wrong,” she said.

She came back to Delhi and asked for the doctor’s registration number. “First he gave a DMC number, but the number corresponded to someone else. So, he provided us a registration number of the Goa Medical Council — again it belonged to someone else. Clearly, the person was not registered,” she said.

“The person... acted recklessly and the actions... constitute an act of negligence,” the DMC order read.