The Delhi government has served showcause notices to five hospitals of the capital that denied critical care to a dengue-stricken child, asking why their registration should not be cancelled. Appallingly, it has cost the lives of a whole family to draw the attention of the authorities to the worst-kept secret of the healthcare system — the lack of beds, infrastructure and capabilities, coupled with the compulsion to show a good treatment record, encourages hospitals to turn away critically ill patients. The parents of seven-year-old Avinash Rout were turned away by the best hospitals in the capital and, by the time they admitted the child to Batra Hospital, he was close to cardiovascular failure. Devastated at having failed to protect their child, his parents killed themselves after performing his last rites.
Similar tragedies play out everyday in hospitals across the country. Patients and their families are so inured to it that comment seems redundant. The case of Avinash Rout, too, would have gone unnoticed but for the suicide of his parents. This was a case of dengue, a serious concern in Delhi, where the government’s health apparatus is currently focused on an outbreak. If a patient in the capital, an obvious candidate for instant hospitalisation, fails to access specialist care in time, the fate of those in other parts of the country, which are poorly served in comparison — if they are served at all — is unimaginable. If finding space was the problem, the hospitals should have showed more imagination, creating temporary wards where less critical patients could have been kept, or interceding, on behalf of the patient, with other hospitals that had more room. The usual argument, that patients are referred to more capable institutions for their own good, does not apply here. It would have been acceptable if this had been a burns case or a virulent disease, for instance, for which referral to specialist facilities is normal. But dengue is a haemorrhagic fever that requires only critical care and timely haematological intervention, which all top hospitals are well-equipped to provide.
(This article first appeared in print under the headline ‘Care-less’)
