The Zilla Mahila Chikithsalai (the district women’s health centre) in Saharanpur allegedly denied ambulance services on Wednesday to a pregnant woman undergoing severe labour pain, on the pretext that there was no fuel in the ambulance.
The incident comes a day after a man in Kaushambi district was forced to carry the body of his niece on a bicycle for about 10 kilometres, after he was allegedly denied an ambulance by a government hospital.
According to Monu Kumar, the husband of the pregnant woman, Rupa, there were four ambulances in the premises of the health centre but he was told that none of them would be available to him due to “lack of fuel”.
“I admitted my wife here on Tuesday night when she began experiencing extreme labour pains. After a few hours, the doctor asked us to shift her to another hospital as they did not have an adequate stock of blood here. I kept calling 108, which is the number to get an ambulance, but there was no response. The hospital authorities told us that none of the four ambulances parked in their premises were fit for use due to lack of fuel,” Kumar told the media on Wednesday.
Desperate to get an ambulance, Kumar even suggested to the driver of one of the ambulances that he would pay for fuel. “The driver said that it doesn’t work like that in a government establishment. Finally, after almost two hours, I managed to get a private vehicle to take my wife to another hospital,” Kumar said.
The chief medical officer of Saharanpur, B.S. Sodi, has ordered a probe into the incident. “This is condemnable. I have ordered a probe to investigate why ambulances were not available, and how such a fuel crisis came about,” he told mediapersons on Wednesday.
He added that when he enquired about the incident from the concerned officials, he was told that there were technical issues, such as fuel blockage and dysfunctional battery, due to which two of the four ambulances couldn’t function. The other two ambulances had already been booked for other patients.
Terming the incident “unacceptable”, the Health Minister of Uttar Pradesh Siddharth Narayan Singh said, “The service providers of 108 need to understand the gravity of the issue. We will not tolerate any more carelessness by them. If the situation doesn’t improve soon, we will have to use the penal provisions in our contract with the ambulance service providers.”
