Waiting outside South Goa hospital, 49-yr-old woman dies in car

MARGAO: A 49-year-old Covid positive woman from Betalbatim died in her car right outside the South Goa district hospital while she was waiting for medical attention.
Sarpanch Constancio Miranda told reporters that the woman was taken to hospital at around 6am on Tuesday by her husband, but was refused entry owing to the large number of patients already inside the casualty department.
She stayed with her husband in their car, patiently awaiting their turn to be allowed inside the hospital. However, as the hours passed, her condition worsened, and she died in the car at around noon, before she could get any medical attention. Her last rites were performed on Tuesday evening.
The incident has sparked outrage over the crumbling healthcare system of the state.
Although the South Goa district hospital has been upgraded to 500 beds from 390-odd earlier, there has been no scaling up of medical and paramedical personnel. Consequently, the already-overstressed doctors and nurses have to attend to an increasing number of patients, thereby stretching manpower resources further.
Seeking admission at the hospital for serious patients is turning out to be a Herculean task, as it is for doctors managing patients in home isolation. A doctor, a private practitioner, told TOI that one of his patients in home isolation who needed hospitalization, got a bed only after 12 hours of waiting outside the hospital.
Ambulances, too, are not readily available at primary health care centres to take patients to the hospital, and it takes hours for one to be arranged, even for doctors. “If this is the case of doctors, imagine the plight of patients who seek assistance on their own,” another doctor told TOI.
A senior hospital official attributed the situation to the suddenly overstrained resources of the hospital. “We are working out the best solutions with the limited resources available at our disposal,” he said. “We are trying to have a dedicated medical team at the swab centre itself, to identify patients needing urgent medical attention.”