The death of Gagana put the spotlight on the alleged delay by doctors in attending to her serious injuries.
Denying any delay, Asha Benekappa, Director of Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health (IGICH), told The Hindu that the toddler was on ventilator support in an ambulance till another patient was weaned off a ventilator in the ICU and put on non-invasive ventilator. “We have 11 ventilators and all were occupied when the child was referred to us,” she said.
“When the baby was brought from NIMHANS to IGICH, she was bleeding profusely from the nose and ear. She had severe swelling in the fronto-temperal area, neck and face. There was no spontaneous respiration. While her right pupil was dilated, the left was constricted indicating that she had suffered brain injury,” the doctor said. “We put the baby on ventilator at 2.05 p.m. Her condition was very critical; her blood pressure and pulse were not recordable. We did our best to save her.”
NIMHANS Director P. Satishchandra admitted that the baby had to be referred to IGICH as all the 35 ventilators in the institute were occupied.
“We have only 35 ventilators. We get a lot of emergency cases. We are helpless as we just cannot just remove one patient from the ventilator to accommodate a new one. We have to wait for each patient to recover,” he explained.
He said work on adding another 25 ventilators under a separate sub-speciality in neuro sciences is underway.
