Rida’s parents –– Sajid Sheikh and Shireen Sheikh –– and aunt Ayesha Sheikh accused the Jahangir Hospital administration of “gross medical negligence,” blaming them for their daughter’s death. They also demanded to ban the doctor concerned from practising.
The family has also decided to file a police complaint against the hospital. Their lawyer Asif Lampwala said the hospital must be brought to book for medical negligence.
Lampwala claimed that there was a “nexus” between Jehangir Hospital and Ruby Clinic.
“There was gross negligence on part of Jehangir Hospital in the case. There is a strong nexus between the two private hospitals. If symptoms of H1N1 flu are there, you have to refer the samples for testing to a government hospital. Why did Jehangir refer it to Ruby?” “We don’t understand why the samples were sent to Ruby Clinic instead of the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune. After the blood samples were sent to Ruby, report comes in an hour while it should have taken minimum one day to complete the tests. The patient was on the ventilator in Jehangir Hospital for four days and the doctors wanted her to shift from the ICU to a private room with the ventilator,” said Lampwala.
“The Ruby test came negative and so the family did not take it seriously. The doctors told the family not to worry and said it was just a lung infection. Had the sample been sent to the NIV, Rida would have been alive,” claimed the lawyer.
Rida was admitted to Jehangir on July 27 and Tamiflu tablet was administered to her only on August 1 when the second test done at NIV turned out to be positive, the lawyer said.
Rida had never been to any foreign country, he claimed, replying to a question.
Ayesha Shaikh regretted trusting the doctors at Jehangir Hospital, saying that the family did not know that the hospital was not authorised to admit swine flu patients and lacked the necessary infrastructure for the tests. “ Had the doctors told us that they suspect swine flu, we would have taken her to Naidu Hospital (Pune Municipal Corporation’s hospital) and at least she would have been home,” said Ayesha. Rida’s family also revealed that they had undergone tests and all of them tested negative for H1N1 virus.
Sajid Usman Shaikh could barely speak at the press conference but he did say that the hospital didn’t try hard to save his daughter. “My daughter would have been safe if they took her condition more seriously,” was all that her father said.
Meanwhile, three new swine flu cases have been reported in Pune, two of them school students who may have contacted the virus from fellow students who reported positive earlier. The third case is of a 26-year-old male who recently arrived from abroad.
The case history
Mumbai, dhns: It was on July 21 that Rida, a Class IX student, first showed symptoms like a sore throat, running nose and headache. She was taken to a general physician for symptomatic treatment and started to feel better. But her fever came back, and on July 26 she was taken to the OPD of Jehangir Hospital, where doctors first diagnosed her condition as an “upper respiratory tract infection” and gave antibiotics.
She was admitted to Jehangir Hospital on July 27 with respiratory problems. On July 29, her condition worsened and she was shifted to the ICU and put on a ventilator support.
It was not until July 30 that throat swabs were sent to the NIV for testing. She was given Tamiflu only on August 1.
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