Kolkata: Park Circus hospital refuses Covid-19 suspect, faces relatives’ ire

KOLKATA: Irate kin of a patient, who were told to shift the latter to a Covid-19 hospital, on Saturday ransacked Islamia Medical Research Institute in Park Circus, attacked staffers and threatened doctors. The matter was reported to police on Sunday but the patient and his kin are yet to be traced.
“Nearly 10-12 of them had come to Islamic Medical Research Institute with a patient. Our emergency department RMO checked on the patient — aged between 50-55 — and found that he was breathing with difficulty and was running a 101°C temperature. Accordingly, we asked them to shift the patient to a facility that can handle Covid-like symptoms as he also had a history of fever. But they refused,” said Ishtiaque Ahmed, the hospital chairperson.

“When we asked them to at least provide us more details about the patient and his medical history, they refused to cooperate at the admission desk. We even explained that since we do not have an isolation ward, we are using only two cabins as stand-by measure where we are testing suspect patients. For corona patients, we are shifting them to Covid hospitals with the help of the state health department. But at that point, not even a cabin was empty. But they kept insisting that the patient be attended to at any cost. Suddenly, they became aggressive and around 10 of them targeted one of our staffers. They misbehaved with one doctor and smashed the glass of the main entrance gate and the window beside it. We then approached police,” the hospital chairperson said.
Police said an FIR was registered on Sunday under IPC sections 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 427 (mischief) along with sections 3 and 4 of the West Bengal Service Persons and Medicare Service Institution (Prevention of Violence and Damage to Property) Act, 2009. Some of these are non-bailable offences.
Police said the CCTV footage was being studied. "It is difficult to ascertain who were involved as several people can be seen running around in the melee. We are trying to gather more footage. The fact that all this happened even before registering the name of the patient has made the probe difficult," said an investigating officer. The state health department and KMC have been informed about it.
"We have already spoken to the hospital security guards and the doctors. We are sure that they were from nearby areas. Attempts are on to trace them at hospitals and nursing homes. We have been told that they came in either a SUV or a van. We are trying to locate the registration number," said an officer.
When TOI visited the hospital on Monday, the hospital emergency and other units were functioning normally. The broken glasses are yet to be changed. "There were several serious patients at the hospital at that time and we are relieved that they did not enter inside," a doctor from the emergency ward said.