MALAPPURAM: A pregnant woman from Malappuram lost her twin foetuses on Sunday after she was allegedly denied treatment at four hospitals on Saturday. Citing that she did not have an RT-PCR test result proving she was free of Covid-19, the denial caused a delay of 14 hours before she received treatment at the Government Medical College Hospital (GMCH) in Kozhikode. By Sunday evening, the doctors declared the twins dead.
N C Sherif, a native of Onnam Mile in Malappuram, reached the Government Medical College Hospital in Manjeri with his wife—Sahla Thasneem, 20 — at 4 am on Saturday.
Thasneem, whose due date was October 26, suffered from some pregnancy-related pain. However, the Manjeri MCH authorities maintained that only Covid positive cases would be treated there, Sherif said.
Though she was discharged at 9.30am, the reference report to the Govt Women and Children’s Hospital, Kottaparamba, in Kozhikode was received only around 11.30am. When they reached the Kottaparamba hospital, it was past the out-patient time slot and the gynaecologist was absent. The authorities asked the couple to go to another hospital. Sherif contacted a private hospital at Omassery in Kozhikode. They too allegedly refused to treat the woman.
Later, the KMCT Medical College Hospital, Manassery, in Mukkam accepted the lady and conducted an antigen test, which showed negative.
Then they took a scan, and reported that the babies’ hearts were not beating. “But I didn’t tell anyone and prayed to god for the scan result to be wrong. So I took her to the Kozhikode MCH,” Sherif said.
He said if the scanning was conducted at Manjeri itself and a solution found earlier, the tragedy could have been averted.“I will file a complaint against the Manjeri hospital authorities who refused to treat my wife when she was in pain,” he said.She was admitted to the Kozhikode MCH around 3pm and taken to the labour room at 3.30pm. The doctors declared the twins dead at 5.45pm.