In yet another shocking case, a woman patient was forced to share a stretcher with an unknown male patient while being wheeled to the X-Ray room at the Maharaja Yeshwantrao Hospital in Indore, the largest state-run hospital in Madhya Pradesh.
The female patient, Sangeeta, a resident of Pandhana in Khandwa district, Indore, had suffered a fracture in her right leg and had been admitted 12 days ago.
“My wife Sangeeta was admitted to the orthopaedic ward. Citing a shortage of stretcher, she was taken for some medical examination with a male patient. We were helpless as we wanted to get our patient treated due to which we became ready to allow her and the male patient on the same bed,” her husband, Dharmendra, said.
On being asked Sangeeta confirmed that it was done on the doctor’s order.
After a video of the incident went viral on social media the administration was compelled to take an action against the hospital authorities. Admitting that there is a shortage of stretchers and other medical facilities in the hospital, the medical superintendent of Maharaja Yeshwantrao Hospital, Dr PS Thakur, promised strict action. “We have issued show cause notice to the doctor, nurse and ward boy, who were on the duty in the respective ward, from where the woman was sent on a stretcher with a male patient,” Dr Thakur confirmed.
However, this is not the first incident throwing light on the government hospital’s apathy towards its patients.
Last week, in a similar case, the staff at the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose (NSCB) Medical College in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, was caught on camera dragging a patient to the X-Ray room on a bed sheet.
In another shocking case, on June 22, a 72-year-old man who was declared dead by a doctor at Bina District Hospital in Madhya Pradesh was found to be still breathing when his body was being sent for a postmortem after spending a whole night in the mortuary.
However, after spending an entire night in a freezing chamber in the morgue, Kashiram Soni, hailing from Chhatarpur district, Madhya Pradesh, couldn’t be revived and died about 90 minutes later.
Moreover, reports on the outbreak of Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES) in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur had also revealed the unpreparedness, callousness and the apathy of the government and the hospitals falling under them.
