JOIN USRelatives of three-year-old Mariyam Kouser, who fell sick after she was allegedly administered an overdose of anaesthesia at the Sanjay Gandhi Institute of Trauma and Orthopaedics, demanded that the accused doctors should be suspended before continuing the inquiry.
Addressing a press conference here on Saturday, B S Rafiulla, chairperson of the Wakf board, Chikkaballapura district, who is also a relative of the child, said the family has taken to legal recourse. “We have filed a case,” he added.
The family accused the hospital of keeping them in dark about the condition of the child and they were unaware that she had developed hypoxia and bradycardia. “The child was admitted on December 13, after she injured her left hand. She was playing and doing well in the hospital. On December 16, she was taken inside the operation theatre,” said Rafiulla. “It was a minor operation for only ten minutes as per the case report file, but the doctors kept her there for three hours.”
Dr Aisha Nikhat, a family friend, alleged that the hospital delayed issuing the case report to the relatives when they sought it. “The parents were initially told that the child will gain consciousness in three hours. But, till the next 48 hours, nothing happened,” Nikat said. Kouser is yet to open her eyes and her condition remains critical. She has undergone tracheostomy (pipe to facilitate breathing) and the patient is being fed with nasogastric tube.
The doctors attending to the girl at Malathi Manipal hospital said the anaesthetic medications had been stopped and her brain activity is showing. “She is responding to pain and making movements. She also coughs and has shown respiratory efforts,” they said.