The entire medical system of Uttar Pradesh in smaller cities and villages is ‘Ram Bharose’ (at God’s mercy), the Allahabad High Court said on Monday as it took note of a case of egregious medical negligence at a goverment hospital in Meerut.
The case involved the death of a person in a top government hospital and the failure of the doctors to identify him later, leading to the disposal of the body. A probe was conducted over the ‘missing’ person by a three-member committee.
Santosh Kumar, aged about 64, was admitted to Medical College, Meerut on April 21 on a reference made by District Hospital Ghaziabad and was kept in an isolation ward. A doctor Tanishq Utkarsh was on duty at the time of his admission. Around 7- 8 p.m. on April 22 when the patient had gone to the washroom, he fainted there. Kumar was brought back on a stretcher and efforts were made to revive him, but he passed away. However, the team in-charge doctor Anshu, who was on night duty, was not present at the ward.
According to the government probe report, during this time, the morning staff at the ward had arrived and taken over.
Dr. Utkarsh got the body removed from the ward and thereafter no efforts were made to trace and identify the person. The doctor could not trace the file of the patient in the isolation ward and even after counting the number of patients and files, the dead person could not be identified, the court was told.
It was taken to be a case of unidentified body and even the team that was on night duty, could not identify it and so the body was packed in a bag and was disposed of, the court was told.
“From the narration of facts, as have emerged out from the inquiry, it comes out to be a case of high degree carelessness on the part of the doctors who were on night duty,” a division bench of Justices Siddharth Varma and Ajit Kumar said.
“It is quite surprising that Dr. Tanishq Utkarsh and his team that was on duty at the time of admission of patient on 21.04.2021, himself could not identify the person. If this is the state of affairs of treatment at medical college in the city like Meerut then the entire medical system of the State pertaining to the smaller cities and villages can only be taken to be like a famous Hindi saying ‘Ram Bharose’,” the court said.
A patient is admitted to the hospital in an absolute care of doctors and paramedical staff and if the doctors and para medical staff adopt such casual approach and show carelessness in the performance of their duty, then it is a case of serious misconduct because it is something like playing with the lives of innocent people, the court said.
The State needs to take stern action against those responsible, may be they are the highest in the ranks. It should compensate the dependents who have suffered the irreparable loss because of such carelessness, the court further said, expressing dissatisfaction over the action taken against the doctors and staff at the hospital in Meerut.
