Parents recount hospital staff’s apathy, neglect
Khalid Ali, a daily wager, is furious with the doctors of Farrukhabad’s Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital (RML Hospital) where his daughter died last month.
Ali and his wife, Gulafshan, insisted their baby died for the want of oxygen and the hospital staff and doctors were to blame.
HT spoke to six more couples whose babies died at the hospital’s sick newborn care unit between July 21 and August 20 and they shared the rage and levelled the same allegations.
Ali said Gulafshan was taken to the hospital with labour pain around 3am on August 12.
“You know what the doctors and staff at RML Hospital told us? Kya yahan marne aayi hai (Have you come here to die)?” said Ali, adding that he was told to take her to Kanpur or Saifai.
“They did not admit her. I had to rush her to a private hospital, where my baby was born.” Ali said the doctors at the private hospital said his baby needed oxygen and advised him to admit her to RML Hospital’s SNCU.
He rushed back to RML and his newborn was admitted and put on oxygen for two hours.
“They showed me my child after taking her off the oxygen. She was moving her hands and legs. I was relieved she was fine.”
“But the hospital staff did not put her on oxygen again and she died within hours. I asked them many times but no one listened to me. This is the worst hospital. The staff and doctors are extremely negligent,” Ali added.
An official report into the deaths of 49 children at the hospital in the span of a month has stated perinatal asphyxia, a condition in which oxygen does not reach the brain, to be the reason.
Virendra Kushwaha of Pattiya in Farrukhabad district lost his firstborn, a boy, within hours of birth. “My wife Shanti was called in to feed him at 8pm. At 11pm, they gave me his body,” he said. “They didn’t give any reason and just asked me to leave.”
He said his baby was given oxygen for an hour. “Dekh bhaal to bilkul bhi nahin ki gayi.”
Akhilesh Kumar of Mahmatpur Amraiya lost his son at the hospital in August. He said doctors told him the baby, born at a private hospital, needed oxygen. “But I did not see anyone putting my son on oxygen.”
Sobran Singh, a farmer from Lokathpur, said lack of oxygen led to his son’s death. “The day my child was admitted, the nurses asked for ₹500 to give me access. I had ₹300 and gave it to them. When I asked later why they were not giving him oxygen, they said he was fine. I went to the room and found him motionless. After some time, they told me the baby was dead and asked me to take the body,” he said.
Atma Prakash, a pharmacist from nearby Shamshabad, however, declined to blame RML Hospital and doctors for the death of his twins.
“My wife Sarita gave birth on August 21. The babies were born three months premature. They died of complications. Doctors did their best to save the babies,” he said.