A critically ill eight-day-old girl child who fended off death at a burial ground on Wednesday succumbed at the Government General Hospital (GGH) here on Thursday morning. The resident medical officer on duty at the special ward for the new-born of the GGH said that the end came at around 7 a.m., and the body was handed over to relatives an hour later. A day earlier, while struggling for her life at a corporate hospital, the infant was taken off life support, with the doctors telling her parents that the chances of survival were slim. Understanding this to mean inevitable death, the family shifted her while still alive to a burial ground. There, onlookers admonished the family for bringing a living baby to the burial ground and called an ambulance and shifted her to GGH. She was put back under ventilator support, but doctors at the government hospital confirmed the prognosis of the corporate hospital.
The corporate hospital denied telling the family to take the baby away. The discharge sheet noted that the baby had suffered brain damage due to oxygen deficiency at the time of delivery and had to be put on ventilator. It also noted that the baby was “discharged against medical advice.”