A farmer from Baghpat in Uttar Pradesh was forced to carry the body of his daughter on a motorcycle after the district hospital did not provide him with ambulance, on Tuesday.
Iqbal, a resident of Gauripur Jawahar Nagar in Baghpat, brought his nine-year-old daughter Reshma to the hospital on Tuesday morning after she had high fever. She died soon after the same day.
“Reshma died because she could not get good medical care in time. With her body in my arms, I spent hours in the hospital requesting the staff to provide me with an ambulance. But no one heard my pleas. I waited for a long time in the hope that I would get an ambulance. But nothing happened,” Iqbal told the media.
“As I did not get an ambulance, my folks got a motorcycle and we took Reshma's dead body home,” he added.
The chief medical officer of Baghpat Dr. Sushma Chandra defended the government hospital staff,saying no one was at fault. She told the media that Reshma's family took her body out of their own will.
The district magistrate (DM) of Baghpat Bhawani Singh Khangarot has ordered a probe into the issue. He said he would be able to comment only after he got the probe report.
A Cabinet Minister in the Animal Husbandry department in the Yogi Adityanath government, S.P. Singh Baghel, who was in Baghpat on Wednesday, was furious after coming to know about the incident.
“Even if an ambulance was not available in the hospital, the authorities should have hired a private vehicle and arranged a dignified journey for the girl's body. This is completely unacceptable. I have asked the DM to quickly probe the issue and take action against the hospital staff responsible for this,” Mr. Baghel told The Hindu .
The incident comes two weeks after a man in Kaushambi district was forced to carry the body of his niece on a bicycle for about 10 km after he was allegedly denied an ambulance by a government hospital.
Last week, a pregnant woman in her labour pain was denied ambulance by the district women's hospital of Saharanpur.
