An 82-year-old man with tuberculosis lying on a bed was left unattended for over four hours near the Guduvanchery railway station on Tuesday morning, before being hospitalised.
According to police and doctors at the Government Hospital for Thoracic Medicine in Tambaram Sanatorium, Sundar (82) was living with his wife Kannagi (75) in a rented house in Pallikaranai near Tambaram. After working in a garment store in T.Nagar for a long time, he quit and remained at home for the past few years. The couple's only daughter was married and living in Kattankulathur.
According to police, the couple were under pressure from their landlord and neighbours to vacate the house as Sundar's persistent coughing was a source of irritation to them. On Tuesday morning, Kannagi hired an autorickshaw. She and her husband took a foldable cot along and came near Guduvanchery railway station. She then placed the cot, asked her husband to lie down and also spread a couple of sheets over him.
She then left the spot, a little past 5 a.m. Passers-by noticed the old man lying alone on the cot in the shade of a tamarind tree and informed personnel on duty at Guduvanchery railway station.
They contacted a few voluntary organisations that were running shelters for the elderly near Guduvanchery, but none came forward to help.
After finding out that Sundar has tuberculosis, they took him to GHTM in an ambulance, at 9.30 a.m. and admitted him there
Meanwhile, police managed to trace his wife Kannagi and their daughter Chitra and they came to the hospital in the evening.
