CHANDIGARH: A 10-month-old baby died at PGI on Tuesday, with her family alleging she did not get ventilator support.
Parents alleged a private hospital in Ludhiana had admitted their child for over two weeks but instead of stabilising her, it asked them to take her to PGI after her condition deteriorated. “I had somehow managed to borrow over Rs 3 lakh to get my daughter admitted in the private hospital. She was kept there for over two weeks.
When the hospital felt I was unable to afford further treatment, I was suggested to take her to the PGI,” said Virender, who works in a local factory in Ludhiana. He said, “She was our only child. We took her to PGI. But no ventilator was available there. We were asked to move her to a private hospital. As I could not afford it, I tried to wait for a ventilator at PGI, where she died. There was a delay at the private hospital which did not even let us avail Ayushman Bharat facility.”
During the Covid surge, a task force was formed to manage unnecessary referrals at PGI. There was a nodal officer who would be a point of contact for doctors in Tricity and Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh. “This hardly worked. No one contacts us from adjoining states before shifting the patient. In the case of the baby who unfortunately passed away, had the hospital contacted us, they would have not travelled so much to find no ventilator available here,” said Prof Jagat Ram, director, PGI.
‘Periphery hosps must upgrade infra’
The PGI director said, “Hospitals in periphery must upgrade their infrastructure to give facilities to patients nearby. These patients come to us when they are in a bad shape.” A study done in PGI's Advanced Paediatric Centre mentioned that out of 22-bed emergency department, there are 15 beds where non-critical children are managed, while seven beds are for critical babies.
The nurse-patient and doctor-patient ratio varies from 1:5 to 1:12 on seven beds and 1:8 to 1:30 on 15 beds. Also, the study revealed that 53% of emergency department visits were with children who could have been managed in outpatient settings instead of the emergency.
