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Treat private, govt hospitals alike: Delhi High Court

The Delhi government closed down Max Hospital for two days on a similar issue. There cannot be two standards, one for the private hospitals and one for government hospitals

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The Centre and AAP government cannot take a different stand for private and government hospitals at least as far as instances of Medical negligience are concerned, the Delhi High court said on Wednesday.

Justice Vibhu Bhakru made the observations while hearing a plea which alleged medical negligence by Centre-run Safdarjung hospital by wrongly declaring a newborn as dead in June last year.

According to the plea, the infant was brought back to the hospital and put on ventilator but died after 36 hours. The court said that if the Delhi government had shut down Max Hospital on the lines of a similar incident, then why should no action be taken against the staff or doctors of Safdarjung hospital.

"The Delhi government closed down Max Hospital for two days on a similar issue. There cannot be two standards, one for the private hospitals and one for government hospitals," it said.

While making this remark, the court also asked the Delhi government to place the file relating to the Max Hospital incident where a twin baby born prematurely on November 30 was wrongly declared dead. The infant died a week later.

The court also directed the Medical Superintendent of Safdarjung Hospital, represented by central government counsel Monika Arora and advocate Kushal Sharma, to return all the medical records of the mother and baby to the family within a week.

It warned that failure to do so would invite its ire. Meanwhile, the court also rejected the stand of the committee, set up by the court, which had contended that their was no medical negligence on the part of the doctors and it was not a baby but an 'abortus', as it was a 22-week-old foetus, and therefore, "did not merit proactive resuscitation," as it was not capable of surviving.

Justice Bhakru said that five-month-old foetuses are known to have survived even if those incidents were rare and therefore, it cannot be said that in the instant case the foetus could not have survived.

The court also expressed displeasure with the "disturbing" manner in which the foetus was handed over to the family in an envelope and directed the hospital to file an affidavit indicating the person responsible for doing so.

The plea filed by the parents through counsel Sija Nair Pal says the baby was born four months prematurely on June 18 at Safdarjung Hospital.

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