Noida: In hospital queue for four hours, 5-year-old dies

NOIDA: A five-year-old girl suffering from pneumonia died after standing in a queue at the out-patient department of the district hospital for nearly four hours on Tuesday. The girl’s parents alleged she died for want of treatment, prompting the authorities to order a probe.
Nandini Valmiki, whose lungs were filled with water, was rushed to the district hospital early on Tuesday morning by her parents after her condition worsened.Her father Vinit Valmiki — a sanitation worker with the Noida Authority — said she had been keeping unwell for the past week and they had been consulting a quack for treatment.
However, Vinit alleged that despite the child being serious, she was asked to stand in the queue for OPD services at the hospital and a doctor checked her only after an hour. “We had asked the hospital staff to allow us to take the girl to the emergency as her condition had deteriorated but we were told to get her examined by a paediatrician.”
After almost an hour of waiting, the couple managed to get the child examined by Dr DR Agrawal who prescribed an X-Ray. While the X-Ray procedure was finished within 15 minutes, the couple failed to get the child’s reports examined by the doctor for about three hours as Dr Agrawal “was busy in a meeting”. Despite two other paediatricians being present in the child OPD, her father alleged that both of them had refused to examine the child saying that she should be examined by the doctor who saw her first. She was finally taken to the emergency ward by her parents where they again had to stand in a queue when she breathed her last.
A broken Vinit told TOI that his daughter had asked that she be taken home when he pacified her, saying that they would get medicines for her before returning. “She kissed me on my cheek and closed her eyes in my lap around 11am. I realised that she was no more,” he said. Vinit and his wife Sunita adopted Nandini when she was about a year old from his younger brother as they had no kids.
When contacted, chief medical superintendent (CMS) of the hospital, Dr Vandana Sharma, said a two-member team of doctors will probe into the child’s death. “It seems the child’s parents went straightaway to the OPD rather than emergency,” she said.
“Dr Agrawal was briefing a team from Lucknow on biomedical waste. There were two other paediatricians in that room. We will inquire why they refused to examine the child. No one should deny examination of a serious patient,” the CMS added. Asked about filtering patients requiring emergency services in the hospital which sees as many as 3000-4000 footfall a day, she said that people requiring emergency services should simply walk into the emergency wing.
Experts, however, feel the child could have been saved had she got timely emergency services. “Her X-ray report indicates water has filled the entire left lung. The child could have been saved had there been timely intervention,” said pulmonologist Dr Mayank Saxena.
Meanwhile, the parents have given a written complaint to the Sector 20 police station against the hospital management.