The family of a 70-year-old person from the Kalyan locality of Mumbai, suffering from breathlessness, fever and throat pain, has alleged that he was refused entry by a leading private hospital as his symptoms were akin to that of COVID-19 .
The patient’s son alleged that his father was made to sit in their vehicle for nearly an hour and was later taken to a “safe room” near the security guards’ cabin outside the hospital, where he was provided medication through intravenous fluids. A driver of the ambulance that was called by the hospital staff also refused to ferry the senior citizen to a government hospital.
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According to the patient’s 26-year-old son, the incident took place on March 17 at the P.D. Hinduja Hospital in Mahim. “My father had nasal congestion and cough. Since he started having difficulty in breathing, we rushed him to a private hospital in Kalyan where the doctors said he could be ailing from COVID-19 and referred us to the Rukminibai Hospital. The doctors at Rukminibai gave him an injection and referred us to Kasturba Hospital for a COVID-19 test,” he said.
The senior citizen had no history of international travel, but he had been to Bengaluru, Mangaluru and Tirupati over the past one month for religious rituals.
“At the Hinduja Hospital, they refused to take us in. I showed them the medical paper from Kasturba Hospital but they insisted that he could be a COVID-19 patient,” he said. The patient was eventually taken to the KEM Hospital, where the doctors diagnosed pneumonia and started treatment.
The contagious novel coronavirus has posed a challenge for all hospitals as any positive patient walking into their premises could be a threat to other patients, who already have compromised immunity. Hinduja Hospital has been extra cautious as it had recently admitted a 64-year-old person with a heart ailment who later tested positive for COVID-19. While the patient succumbed after being shifted to Kasturba Hospital, eight hospital staff members who came in contact with the patient have since been in isolation while many others have been advised home quarantine.
A Hinduja Hospital spokesperson said that after the detection of a COVID-19 case at the hospital on March 12, they had been realigning ICUs and beds for the safety of patients and their treatment of as per guidelines. “The patient arrived with severe respiratory issues and needed ICU care, which was not possible at that time in view of the realignment. Therefore, the patient was attended to, stabilised and then referred to other hospital,” the spokesperson said.
