Bengal hospital gets clean chit in patient denial case

 The West Bengal government Sunday gave a clean chit to a state-run city hospital following allegations that a pregnant woman died allegedly after she was denied admission there.

"As per initial probe reports, prima facie it appears that no pregnant woman seeking admission came to Chittaranjan Seva Sadan (CSS), as such there cannot be any patient refusal," Health Secretary Sanjay Mitra told media persons at the Writers' Buildings state secretariat here.

Mitra said statements of the hospital staff including the superintendent and the daughter of the deceased provide that Usha Devi died at her home after giving birth to the twins and she did not come to the hospital.

Usha Devi, 38, had on Thursday night given birth to a child. After she fell ill, her husband took her to Chittaranjan Seva Sadan. But her family members alleged the hospital refused admission and referred her to another state-run hospital.
On her way to the hospital, she gave birth to another child and was again refused admission and referred back to CSS hospital. Uma Devi died on her way.

There was also some controversy during the media meet after Chittaranjan Seva Sadan superintendent, Ashis Mukhopadhay said that Usha was brought to the hospital after she had died but Mitra maintained that she was never brought to the hospital

"As per her daughter’s statement, Usha’s condition worsened after she gave birth to the babies and she had died while on her way to the hospital. One of our doctors checked her to confirm she was dead,” Mukhopadhay said.

However Mitra claimed that she was taken to the state run SSKM hospital by police where she was declared brought dead and her post-mortem was also performed there.

Later, Mukhopadhyay retracted from his earlier view and claimed that Usha was taken to SSKM and not to CSS.

Following the incident, a probe was ordered by Mukhopadhyay and an initial report submitted before the health department, which gave a clean chit to the hospital.
Both the hospital and the health officials said that the records maintained by the hospital do not show any mention of Usha and claimed that there was "no patient refusal".