Doctors at Max Hospital, Shalimar Bagh, failed to conduct the electrocardiography (ECG) tracing before declaring dead a baby that was later found alive last week, the Delhi government’s preliminary inquiry has found.
The hospital had declared premature twins born to Varsha and Ashish on November 30 dead. While the family was taking the babies for their last rites, one of them, a boy, was found breathing.
The baby was then admitted to a private nursing home.
Health Minister Satyendar Jain had ordered the inquiry on December 1. In the meantime, the hospital terminated the services of two of the treating doctors — Dr. A.P. Mehta and Dr. Vishal Gupta.
Preliminary report
According to the preliminary report submitted by a three-member team to Mr. Jain on Tuesday evening, the hospital was found guilty of not following prescribed norms in dealing with newborns.
After meeting staff and going through hospital records, the probe team found that no ECG tracing, which measures the electrical activity of the heart, was done to check whether the baby was alive.
The baby’s body was handed over without written instructions and the twins — one dead and one alive — were not kept separately.
The final report is expected by Friday, after which the government will take action, though Mr. Jain has already said the option of cancelling the hospital’s licence was on the table.
Meanwhile, Indian Medical Association president Dr. K.K. Aggarwal said the report was a misinterpretation of the situation.
“Our team is still looking into the incident and the staff is being investigated. Yes, a mistake has happened, but this seems to be a total system failure,” he said.
‘Have to wait’
“If the report says that ECG was not done, then there are several ways of looking at it... wasn’t the child monitored at all? We have to wait to understand completely what happened,” Dr. Aggarwal added.
Delhi Medical Council Registrar Dr. Girish Tyagi said they were in the process of speaking to the doctors individually. “Our report should be in by early next week,” he said.
Reacting to the report, Max Healthcare said in a statement, “Media flashes indicate that the said report is preliminary. We would like to thoroughly review the final report when we receive it before commenting. In the meantime, we are fully cooperating with all relevant authorities on this issue.”
