Ahmedabad: Patient with kidney trouble dies as hospital closes ICU

TNN | Updated: Apr 16, 2020, 06:49 IST

P T Sebastian

AHMEDABAD: The private medical service paralysed due to the Covid-19 spread and the nationwide lockdown has started taking its toll now. A 69-year-old man suffering from a chronic kidney disease did not survive because he required an urgent ICU facility, but the private hospital, he was in, had closed its ICU due to the dip in the number of patients.
The case involved P T Sebastian from Bodakdev area who was suffering from the kidney ailment. His family was on the receiving end, and they still cannot comprehend that they were so helpless because the ICU facility was not operational. Sebastian’s condition deteriorated on Sunday, but the pathology service was not available due to the lockdown.
The family waited till Monday morning for blood tests. Since his condition became critical, his treating doctor advised him immediate dialysis, though his scheduled dialysis was on Tuesday at Trisha Multi-specialty Hospital in Vadaj.
Sebastian’s widow Sushma told TOI: “First of all, it took us a great deal to convince the hospital staff to take my husband on dialysis a day ahead out of turn. As his condition deteriorated further, we requested the hospital staff to treat him in the ICU. But the hospital told us that the ICU facility was shut because of the government’s orders.”
Sushma said that Sebastian was later shifted to another hospital, where the ICU was operational.
“Because of the skeletal hospital staff in this lockdown period, we faced a lot of difficulty in shifting him. However, by the time he was shifted to the ICU and the ventilator was made available, he had already passed away. We felt so helpless because of the waste of time. There must be many people in this country who may have to suffer because of such situations,” Sushma said.
The hospital authority refused to admit that the ICU facility was denied to the patient, and clarified that there were no orders from the government to shut the ICU. Dr Hitesh Panchal of Trisha Hospital said, “We have closed our ICU facility for the past 15 days because we had not received patients after the lockdown. We are running only emergency dialysis and the orthopaedic department.”