Lucknow: The entire medical system of Uttar Pradesh in smaller cities and villages is depemd on ‘Ram Bharose’, the Allahabad High Court said on Monday as it took note of a case of medical negligence at a goverment hospital in Meerut.
The case involved the death of a person in a top government hospital and the failure of the doctors to identify him later, leading to the disposal of the body. A probe was conducted over the ‘missing’ person by a three-member committee.
Santosh Kumar, aged about 64, was admitted to Medical College, Meerut on April 21 on a reference made by District Hospital Ghaziabad and was kept in an isolation ward. A doctor Tanishq Utkarsh was on duty at the time of his admission. Around 7- 8 p.m. on April 22 when the patient had gone to the washroom, he fainted there. Kumar was brought back on a stretcher and efforts were made to revive him, but he passed away. However, the team in-charge doctor Anshu, who was on night duty, was not present at the ward.
According to the government probe report, during this time, the morning staff at the ward had arrived and taken over.
Dr. Utkarsh got the body removed from the ward and thereafter no efforts were made to trace and identify the person. The doctor could not trace the file of the patient in the isolation ward and even after counting the number of patients and files, the dead person could not be identified, the court was told.
It was taken to be a case of unidentified body and even the team that was on night duty, could not identify it and so the body was packed in a bag and was disposed of, the court was told.
“From the narration of facts, as have emerged out from the inquiry, it comes out to be a case of high degree carelessness on the part of the doctors who were on night duty,” a division bench of Justices Siddharth Varma and Ajit Kumar said.
“It is quite surprising that Dr. Tanishq Utkarsh and his team that was on duty at the time of admission of patient on 21.04.2021, himself could not identify the person. If this is the state of affairs of treatment at medical college in the city like Meerut then the entire medical system of the State pertaining to the smaller cities and villages can only be taken to be like a famous Hindi saying ‘Ram Bharose’,” the court said.
The State needs to take stern action against those responsible, may be they are the highest in the ranks. It should compensate the dependents who have suffered the irreparable loss because of such carelessness, the court further said, expressing dissatisfaction over the action taken against the doctors and staff at the hospital in Meerut.
The court also mentioned the example of Bijnor of western UP during the hearing. The court said, ‘We are surprised that there is no level 3 hospital in Bijnor district. There are only 150 beds in three government hospitals, where the BIPAP machines are only five and the number of high-flow Nasal Cannula is only 2. ‘
The court said, ‘If we consider the population of rural areas to be 32 lakhs, then there are only 10 Community Health Centers or CHCs. In such a situation, there is a health center for 3 lakh people. At the same time, there are only 30 beds for 3 lakh people. This means, a CHC can only meet the health care requirement of 0.01 percent of the population. There is no BIPAP machine or high-flow Nasal Cannula. ‘
The High Court has also issued some instructions in this regard, according to which big business houses should invest their donated funds to buy the vaccine.
Read also: New standards of the hope set by 100-year-old COVID-recovered UP woman
The Allahabad High Court has also directed to increase the facilities of nursing homes. 40 per cent of the 20-bed nursing homes should be ICU, out of which 25 per cent beds should be equipped with ventilators, 50 per cent biped machines and 25 per cent high flow nasal cannula.
The High Court held that a 30-bed nursing home or hospital would have to maintain its own oxygen production plant.
There should be 20 ambulances in every small city, 2 ambulances with ICU facility in the village.
