But say that despite the pervasive staff negligence in civic hospitals, they are the only option available.
The civic-run Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General (LTMG) Hospital, popularly known as the Sion hospital, has been in news for all the wrong reasons.
In January last year, the hospital’s security and negligent staff came under fire after a four-day-old baby was stolen from the maternity ward.
On Wednesday, a breathing patient was almost bundled into the mortuary by a ward boy. The case took a serious turn after the patient, Mahadev Upar, who was suffering of liver cirrhosis, died within half an hour of being put back on medication.
The news spread fast among the other patients admitted to the hospital, who feared that they are not in safe hands.
However, they also felt that they had no other option. A 33-year-old vendor, who was admitted in the orthopaedic ward after a speeding vehicle rammed into him a few days ago, said, “Earlier, the poor died outside the hospitals. Now they die inside due to the carelessness of the staff.”
“With so many patients, the staff is bound to have no value for human life,” said a 44-year-old man who works as a peon, while accompanying his brother who has been paralysed from below the hips. He added that he now constantly fears that his brother is not being given proper treatment.
According to health expert Abhay Shukla, the incident can be a minor one for the hospital, but it is a huge loss to the family of the deceased. “There has to be a procedure in place wherein a patient is certified dead, the case papers are made, and the other staff then works according to these papers,” said Shukla, adding that
in this case, no such procedure was followed.
In the ward boy’s defence, Pradeep Narkar, joint secretary of the municipal mazdoor union, claimed there was no mistake. “The nurses have to be present when the ward boy prepares the body to be taken to the mortuary.
However, in this case, the nurses were busy,” he said. Nerkar added that, “After a patient is declared dead, a white curtain is pulled between his cot and the others. In this case, the white curtain was removed, most probably by the relatives, due to which he got confused.”
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