Noida: Baby can’t get NICU for seven hours, dies in father’s lap

GREATER NOIDA: The baby boy was born around 9.30pm on Monday. Sometime around 4am, not even seven hours old, he passed away in his father Raj Kumar’s lap. The desperate parent had rushed from one hospital to another all night but hadn’t found a neonatal ICU that could admit his son. He was pleading with a hospital worker to call a doctor, his baby in one hand and an oxygen cylinder in the other, when he realised the infant wasn’t breathing.
The family expressed its agony in a video. “We want to highlight what people on the ground have been facing. The non-Covid-19 population needs equal attention of the healthcare system,” said a distraught Prem, the baby’s uncle.
Incidentally, Noida’s only state-run superspecialty hospital for children, the Child PGI, has been converted into a Covid-19 hospital and is currently out of bounds for other patients.
It was Raj Kumar and his wife Rekha’s first child. A special moment for the Greater Noida-based couple, originally from Mahoba. But anxiety struck almost as soon as they held the child. He didn’t bawl. The weight of the boy was 3.5kg and the fetal ultrasound conducted on Saturday had shown nothing unusual. Shri Krishna Life Line hospital, a private facility in Greater Noida where the boy was born, asked Raj Kumar to admit the baby at a more advanced institute. The hospital, according to the family, said it could not treat the child.
Raj Kumar and Prem rushed to Green City hospital nearby. The baby was admitted there around 10pm and kept on ventilator support for two hours, after which the staff there asked Raj Kumar to shift the baby to another hospital that could treat it, according to the findings of a probe panel comprising Noida’s additional chief medical officer Sanjiv Mangalik and surveillance officer Sunil Dohare, which issued notices to both hospitals. The probe was ordered by district magistrate Suhas LY on Tuesday morning.
Prem, however, told TOI they called 112 to move the child to another facility because they couldn’t afford the private hospital, which had asked them to deposit Rs 25,000. “My brother (Raj Kumar) was employed with a factory in Greater Noida but has been out of work since it was shut due to the lockdown. I too have been out of a job. Since we didn’t have that kind of money, we tried to take the child to another facility,” said Prem.
Calls to 112 brought a PCR vehicle instead of an ambulance. The cops asked Raj Kumar to call 108, the ambulance service. The ambulance that arrived took them to the nearest community health centre (CHC) in Dadri. Though CHCs in UP are equipped to handle maternal care, including complicated deliveries, the staff at CHC Dadri referred the child to the District Hospital in Sector 30 (Noida).
Dr Amit Kumar, in-charge of CHC Dadri, said, “In such cases, a child requires an NICU, which is why the doctor would have referred him. Usually, as per norm, children are referred to the SSPHPGTI (Child PGI) but since it has been converted into a Covid hospital now, they are being referred to the District Hospital instead.” Among state-run facilities in Noida, however, only Child PGI has an NICU.
According to Raj Kumar, the child was alive at this point. By the time the brothers reached the District Hospital, 30km away, it was around 4am. The family said a paramedic checked the boy after about 25 minutes. “We kept wailing the whole time. We felt helpless. We pleaded with the staff members to call a doctor. After a while, we were handed over a death certificate,” said Prem.
In the video, Prem said, “Since 11 pm, we have called the police and ambulance, and they kept shuttling us from one hospital to another… What was the fault of this innocent child? Who killed him?”
The DM later told TOI, “Our team will get in touch with child’s father. Explanation will be sought from the concerned doctors at Dadri and the Sector 30 facility. We will also check whether the private hospitals cooperated with the parents or not.”