Alleging medical negligence to be the cause of the death of B. Roshan Balina (23) during tubectomy at the Family Planning Association of India’s clinic here on Monday, her relatives and Social Democratic Party of India cadres petitioned Collector’s office on Tuesday demanding an enquiry into the incident.
Coincidentally, as Revenue Minister R.N. Udhaya Kumar and Cooperation Minister ‘Sellur’ K. Raju reached the Collectorate in the morning to distribute welfare measures to farmers, SDPI cadres and the grieving family met the two ministers and presented their petition.
Mr. Raju assured that a detailed enquiry would be initiated by the Health Department officials and necessary action taken accordingly.
M. Sikkandar, father of the deceased woman, said that his daughter, already a mother of two girl children, delivered a boy at a private hospital on Thursday last.
He said that Balina, along with her mother, went to the FPAI clinic at Ellis Nagar on Monday morning for tubectomy.
“Only after necessary check-ups, doctors took her to the operation theatre for the procedure. However, after a little while, they called an ambulance and sent her to the Government Rajaji Hospital,” he said, adding that the family was not explained as what went wrong. Doctors at the GRH declared that Ms. Balina was brought dead.
Alleging that the hospital lacked adequate infrastructure and staff, M. Jaffar Sultan, Madurai district president, SDPI, demanded that the Health Department officials and the police should inspect the hospital and investigate whether similar deaths had happened before.
The FPAI, however, denied the allegation that the death was due to medical negligence. Acknowledging that Ms. Balina’s vital health parameters were proper before the surgery, S. Prathiban, Branch Manager of FPAI Madurai, said that her pulse rate became erratic only after successful completion of tubectomy by a team lead by Medical Officer S. Vijayalakshmi.
Stressing that there was nothing wrong in the procedure, including administration of anaesthesia, he said, “The doctors could not immediately diagnose the reason for irregular pulse rate. Without taking risk, they referred her to the GRH,” he said.
Claiming that this was the first such death in the history of the FPAI’s Madurai branch, which performs around 300 tubectomies every month, he added that even on Monday three more women underwent the procedure successfully.
