Diseased health care system killed my husband
Dr JK Misra died waiting for treatment at UP hospital where he worked for 50 years
For five decades, Dr Jagdish Kumar Misra, 85, treated patients at the Swarup Rani Nehru (SRN) Hospital in Allahabad now renamed Prayagraj. The government medical college was like a second home to him. He was among the first resident surgeons at the hospital and his wife Dr Rama Misra, 80, a renowned gynaecologist, had been its faculty member.
So when the retirees contracted Covid-19 and Dr JK Misra’s oxygen level fell precariously low, they turned up at SRN on April 13 without a second thought. “It was our gravest mistake,” Dr Rama said.
Last Friday, Dr JK Misra died at the hospital, writhing in pain and waiting for treatment, alleged a devastated Dr Rama.
Left to die
The gynaecologist recounted her horrifying experience in a phone interview with Gulf News. Her story provides a shocking insight into the state of affairs at government hospitals in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, where the coronavirus has claimed nearly 10,000 lives so far.
“I thought we would be in good hands, but we were left to die,” said Dr Rama. “The hospital staff arranged a bed for my husband but I had to rough it out on the floor because all beds were occupied. My husband was given an injection on the first and second days but the doctors refused to tell what it was.
“Agonising screams of patients would reverberate across the ward all night but there was hardly anyone to attend them — just one junior doctor, who would show up occasionally. By morning, many of these cries would fall silent. Young men and women I chatted with hours earlier lay motionless covered in white sheet. They could have been saved. There were no blood pressure monitors or thermometer. Even something as simple as blood thinner was not given to my husband.”
Dr Rama said her husband’s condition suddenly deteriorated in the afternoon of April 16. “His oxygen level started to fall rapidly. I begged the doctors to
put him on a ventilator but the laryngoscope and endotracheal (ET) tube — the two key equipment needed to ventilate a patient — weren’t available.
“Time was ticking away. He was coughing blood. When I yelled at the hospital staff, they wheeled him into an ICU located on another floor without putting him on oxygen support. The lapse proved fatal. By the time I reached the ICU, my husband had stopped breathing. All ICUs have ventilators and I was hoping to find one at SRN too.
“Indeed, there was a ventilator but there was no suction apparatus, the laryngoscope was rusted, the ET tube was missing and there was no anaesthetist. It takes about three minutes for the heart to stop. My husband was without oxygen support for 20 minutes. A diseased health care killed him not Covid. As someone who gave the hospital 50 years of his life, my husband deserved better.”
Hospital denies lapses
SRN’s nodal officer Dr Mohit Jain could not be reached for a comment despite several attempts, but he has been quoted by a publication as saying that there was no medical negligence at the hospital.