By Matters India Reporter
New Delhi: The Delhi government on December 8 canceled the license of a hospital facing backlash after it wrongly declared a new born dead.
Max Hospital in Shalimar Bagh cannot take new patients for now, Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain said. “The negligence in the newborn death case was unacceptable,” he said.
The upscale hospital on November 30 declared a baby boy dead nearly a week of treatment. It then handed over the body to his parents along with his twin in a plastic bag.
The family had a shock when it noticed a movement in the package when the twins were being taken for burial. When the wrapping was opened, the baby boy was found breathing and squirming.
The baby was taken to Agarwal Hospital in Pitampura and placed on life support. The child finally died on December 6.
“We did our best to save the child but we had to give up at about 12 in the afternoon. He was on life support since the time he was brought here. He was bleeding from multiple organs and he could not survive,” said Dr Sandeep Gupta of Agarwal Hospital.
The doctor however said survival of a 22 to 23-week-old premature baby is very difficult and none of such cases of survival has been reported yet.
The twins were born to Shalimar Bagh residents Ashish and Varsha 22 weeks premature.
Meanwhile, the Delhi government asked three-member panel to investigate the matter. The panel found Max Hospital guilty of not following rules while dealing with newborns. The panel reported that the hospital failed to carry out ECG tracings to check if the child was alive. Electrocardiogram tracing or ECG tracing helps evaluate heartbeats.
The hospital sacked the two doctors in charge of the twins’ case.
Survival in extreme pre-term births is rare, Max Healthcare said in a statement, expressing grief over the baby’s death.
The other twin, a girl, was declared still-born.
The private hospital had told the parents that the other baby needed critical medical care and had to be kept in an incubator. “The hospital said for three days, it will cost 100,000 rupees each and after that, it would cost 50,000 rupees each day, and he had to be kept for three months,” a relative said.
But when the parents were debating the costs, they were told that the infant had died.
The Indian Medical Association also held a meeting regarding the negligence of doctors at the hospital. The services of the doctors A P Mehta and Vishal Gupta were terminated in the case.
After infant’s death, the family members demanded cancellation of Max Hospital’s license and an FIR against the doctors involved in the medical negligence.
“We could not say anything more but the doctor should be put behind bars and the license of the hospital must be cancelled so that this incident is not repeated with any family in future,” said a maternal uncle of the deceased infant.