Dubai: For five decades, Dr Jagdish Kumar Misra, 85, treated patients at the Swarup Rani Nehru (SRN) Hospital in Allahabad now renamed Prayagraj. The government medical college was like a second home to him. He was among the first resident surgeons at the hospital and his wife Dr Rama Mishra, 80, a renowned gynaecologist, had been its faculty member.
So when the retirees contracted COVID-19 and Dr JK Misra’s oxygen level fell precariously low, they turned up at SRN on April 13 without a second thought.
“It was our gravest mistake,” Dr Rama said.
Last Friday, Dr JK Misra died at the hospital, writhing in pain and waiting for treatment, alleged a devastated Dr Rama, who claims to have spent a night on the hospital floor because there were no vacant beds.
The gynaecologist recounted her horrifying experience in a phone interview with Gulf News this week. Her story provides a shocking insight into the state of affairs at government hospitals in India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, where the coronavirus has claimed nearly 10,000 lives so far, although unofficial estimates put the numbers at much higher. Most of these deaths have been caused by apathy and lack of basic medical facilities, families of the deceased have alleged.
“I thought we would be in good hands, but we were left to die,” said Dr Rama. “The hospital staff arranged a bed for my husband but I had to rough it out on the floor because all beds were occupied.
“My husband was given an injection on the first and second days but the doctors refused to tell what it was.
“Agonising screams of patients would reverberate across the ward all night but there was hardly anyone to attend them. There was no ward boy during the night — just one junior doctor, who would show up occasionally. By morning, many of these cries would fall silent. Young men and women I chatted with hours earlier lay motionless covered in white sheet. They could have been saved. There were no blood pressure monitors or thermometer. It was only after I persisted that they grudgingly gave us a BP monitor. Even something as simple as blood thinner was not given to my husband.”
Dr Rama said her husband’s condition suddenly deteriorated in the afternoon of April 16. “His oxygen level started to fall rapidly. I begged the doctors to put him on a ventilator but the laryngoscope and endotracheal (ET) tube — the two key equipment needed to ventilate a patient — weren’t readily available.
“Time was ticking away. Every minute was precious. He was coughing blood. When I yelled at the hospital staff, they wheeled him into an ICU located on another floor without putting him on oxygen support. The lapse proved fatal. By the time I reached the ICU, my husband had stopped breathing. All ICUs have ventilators and I was hoping to find one at SRN too.
“Indeed, there was a ventilator but there was no suction apparatus, the laryngoscope was rusted, the ET tube was missing and there was no anaesthetist. It takes about three minutes for the heart to stop. My husband was without oxygen support for 20 minutes. A diseased health care killed him not COVID-19. As someone who gave the hospital 50 years of his life, my husband deserved better.”
Hospital denies lapses
SRN’s nodal officer Dr Mohit Jain could not be reached for a comment despite several phone calls by Gulf News, though he has been quoted by a publication as saying that there was no medical negligence at the hospital.
“The patients who come to us are mostly critical with oxygen levels as low as 25-30. We have over 500 patients. Many of them are in serious condition. There is little we can do to save them. We are capable of treating all kinds of diseases if patients come to us at the right time,” he was quoted as saying in a news report. “Dr JK Misra died of cardiac arrest. Dr Rama has just lost her husband so she might have complaints but the fact is that we did our best.”
