Jharkhand: Black fungus patient dies of ‘medical negligence’ at Rims

RANCHI: The 45-year-old mucormycosis patient, Usha Devi, who was operated at Rims on July 8 after the intervention of the Jharkhand high court, passed away on Sunday morning. After the news of Devi’s death broke, her relatives alleged negligence on the part of the hospital authorities, complaining that she had to wait for more than 50 days for her surgery.
Devi’s son, Gaurav Gupta, has demanded an enquiry alleging that his mother would have been alive had the surgery been conducted earlier. Gaurav has filed a police complaint at Bariatu police station demanding action against 11 doctors, including Rims director Dr Kameshwar Prasad and medical superintendent Dr Vivek Kashyap, for ‘medical negligence’.
Gaurav said: “I submitted applications to hospital superintendent Dr Vivek Kashyap twice, requesting him to arrange for my mother’s surgery but he didn’t take any action. The doctors had also cancelled the surgery of my mother twice in the last one month on one pretext or the other. I demand a thorough enquiry into my mother’s treatment at Rims,” Gupta said.
ENT specialist and surgeon Dr Abhishek Kumar Ramadhin, who has been treating patients of mucormycosis, said: “Black fungus cannot be cured with just medicines and surgery has to be conducted for the removal of fungal load from the infected parts. I have treated 29 mucormycosis patients so far and I have operated all of them because medicines cannot help in eliminating the infection load and if it continues to grow it could prove fatal for the patient.”
Speaking on Usha Devi’s case, Dr Ramadhin said that not conducting surgery on a confirmed mucormycosis patient was equivalent to not treating the patient.
Soon after Devi’s death on Sunday morning, Rims authorities deployed security forces on the fifth floor ICU of the super-speciality block. An anti-riot vehicle was also spotted outside the building.
When contacted, Rims PRO Dr D K Sinha said: “Police have been deployed based on inputs received by the hospital administration.”
On being asked why Usha Devi’s scheduled surgeries were postponed on two occasions, Dr Sinha said: “I do not know the exact reasons behind the postponements, but the director had given a piece of his mind to the team that was tasked to look after the black fungus patient. Dr Prasad had also taken the nodal officer to task for failure in conducting the surgeries of black fungus patients.”
Meanwhile, doctors treating Devi said she developed septicaemia post-surgery and that led to her death. “There was excessive bleeding from the portions near her left eye, which was removed during surgery. Her blood pressure level also reduced drastically. The patient had developed infection and she died due to septicaemia,” Dr Chandrakanti Birua, the nodal officer for mucormycosis at Rims, said.