At a time when chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who also holds the health portfolio, is persistently urging the medical fraternity to serve the patients with care, a woman died after giving birth to twins after being denied admission allegedly by two government-run hospitals despite having a government health card. Ironically, both the hospitals — Chittaranjan Sishu Sadan (CSS) and Shambhu Nath Pandit Hospital (SNPH) — under the scanner fall under Ms Banerjee’s Assembly constituency: Bhowanipore.
Usha Devi, the 40-year-old pregnant pavement dweller of Mayo Road near Kolkata Press Club, felt labour pain on the chilly Thursday night. Her husband Titu Tanti said, “She complained of pain after 11 pm. She gave birth to a boy and a girl on the roadside within a gap of an hour and fell ill. I helped her in the deliveries by cutting the chords.”
Following the deliveries, her condition started deteriorating.
Wasting no time, Tanti hired a taxi and rushed her to the CSS for treatment at around 1.30 am on Friday. He showed his wife’s health card to the hospital authorities for admission. But to his horror, he was denied. “An on-duty doctor refused my wife admission and referred her to the SNPH,” the resident of Bihar recalled. Since her pregnancy, she was visiting the CSS for medical check-up using the health card, he added.
Hapless, the couple went to the SNPH only to be greeted with the same response. “The authorities there asked me to return to the previous hospital. I again took her to CSS. This time the doctors said my wife had turned cold, indicating that she had died,” he said.
At around 9 am, the pedestrians spotted the new-borns wrapped in clothes on the footpath at Mayo Road and admitted them to the CSS with the help of a NGO.
Waking up to incident, the state health department ordered the CSS authorities to conduct a probe and sent its two officials to both the hospitals for inspection.
Leader of the Opposition Surjyakanta Mishra slammed Ms Banerjee’s failure as the health minister. The health department rejected the allegation of negligence.