Friends deny Ranga kin claim

8220;The topic never came up for discussion,8221; he said adding that he did chide him for going to Apollo rather than AIIMS in April. 8220;This is something I tell everyone as private hospitals go for very sophisticated and expensive methods, ignore simple and sure methods and have no clinical sense,8221; he said.

He also said that he did not even know that Ranga was on ATT. He said that he met him in the end of July and had asked him to go to AIIMS for a check up.

He said that he personally felt that ATT was good if a patient had prolonged fever and blood tests did not show any malignancy. He added that he would advise these things only to people he was treating and not to people he could not monitor. 8220;I have been out of practice for several years and so do not thrust my opinion on people,8221; he said.

Another doctor Kumaramangalam spoke to during the two months after leaving Apollo was Dr Gita Chadda, his sister-in-law and a gynaecologist at Apollo Hospital.

Chadda said that Kumaramangalam asked her after leaving Apollo if it was all right to take TB drugs. 8220;I said since his blood tests did not show any abnormality, it was safe to take them on a trial basis. I told him that he could take them for six weeks and then take other tests if the fever stayed,8221; says Chadda. She said he wanted to seek a second or third opinion from her.

The next time she saw him was in June when she said that he looked very sick. 8220;He seemed to ignore the remark and we did not speak on the matter,8221; she says.

Both doctors said that they were under the impression that he was seeing some other doctors and getting treatment.

Chadda said she was worried that Ranga had lung cancer but that was allayed by tests at Apollo. Tyagi, however, said that it is unlikely that the blood tests in Apollo did not show anything abnormal. He also said that even bone marrow tests are not guaranteed to reveal diseases in all cases.

Dr Chadda defended Apollo and said that they did everything possible. And the diagnosis of Acute myloid leukamia also could not be faulted. She said that AML can destroy immunity overnight and plunge a patient into septicimia. It is more disastrous and faster than any other illness, she said and wanted the entire case to be seen as a misfortune rather than the result of some medical errors.