A day after ordering RDO enquiry into the ‘maternal death’ of a 22-year-old woman at the Government Headquarters Hospital here for want of timely medical intervention, Collector S. Natarajan made a full-fledged enquiry summoning all the doctors in the district and made bio-metric attendance compulsory at the government hospitals.
V Anitha (22), who was admitted to the hospital on October 20 after she developed labour pain, gave birth to a girl child the same night through caesarean section and was recuperating when she developed chest congestion on Tuesday night.
The young mother was denied timely medical intervention as Dr. Kannagi, the Assistant Civil Surgeon, who was on duty, was allegedly not present in the hospital. The staff nurse tried to call the doctor in vain and and the woman died on Wednesday morning.
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Considering this as a serious lapse on the part of the duty doctor, the Collector ordered an enquiry by the Revenue Divisional Officer (RDO) into the death and a departmental enquiry by Deputy Director of Health (Paramakudi), who is the maternal death audit chairperson.
Post mortem was conducted on the orders of the RDO and reports awaited, hospital sources said.
Pending enquiries, Mr. Natarajan visited the hospital on Thursday and conducted a full-fledged enquiry, summoning all the 40-odd doctors in the district.
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Reports suggested that the staff nurse was desperately searching for the duty doctor and had made as many as 52 calls to her mobile to contact Dr. Kannagi, sources said.
Preliminary enquiries revealed that the duty doctor was not present in the hospital on Tuesday night and turned up only around 5 30 a.m. on Wednesday. Even after visiting the hospital she attended to some other patient and not the hapless woman, who got married in February this year and came to the hospital for her first delivery.
The bio-metric device was installed in the hospital a year ago but soon became defunct. No effort was made to repair it as the doctors were opposed to the attendance system, sources said. After ensuring that the device was repaired, the Collector inspected its functioning on Thursday and warned stern action against those found wanted during duty hours.