Baby’s death: Report blames private hospital

Noida: An inquiry into the death of a newborn whose father shuttled from one hospital to another on Monday night to find a neonatal ICU has found the hospital that had admitted the baby for a couple of hours guilty of negligence.
This hospital, Green City, was where the newborn was brought by his father Raj Kumar and uncle Prem from another Greater Noida hospital where the child was born. The baby, a boy, hadn’t cried after birth and needed urgent medical attention.
A statement by chief medical officer (CMO) Dr Deepak Ohri said, “The baby was kept here (at Green City) for two hours after which, he was kept on ventilator support. Following this, the hospital asked the duo to take the child to another hospital.” The statement added that the hospital committed negligence on three parts -- not providing an ambulance for the baby, not sending a medical staffer to accompany the ventilated baby and not issuing a proper referral slip.
“The father of the patient called up an ambulance and since the referral was not proper, he was first taken to the community health centre (CHC) in Dadri which referred the child to the SSPHPGTI since it did not have a paediatrician,” read the statement.
However, the Dadri CHC had referred the baby to “District Hospital, Sector 30”, not SSPHPGTI, or Child PGI, the superspecialty hospital for children in Noida that has now been turned into a Covid hospital.
Even the district hospital does not have a neonatal ICU, which was required in this case.
Ohri said that a notice had been issued to Green City hospital and a team of heath staff may visit the hospital for investigation. Dr RK Verma, owner of Green City hospital, told TOI, “The baby’s condition was poor. He was brought here with intubation and his respiration had not started since he had no cry after birth. The patient's father was informed that he needs to be kept on ventilator support and chances of survival were less. However, they said that if we could not guarantee the child's survival, they would take him to a government hospital. We even provided him a pump and a tube to keep in the government ambulance, which arrived two hours later, as none of the ambulances in government facilities or private hospitals in Greater Noida has an ambulance with ventilator support,” he said.