Amid authorities focussed on tackling COVID-19 crisis, a 60-year-old man died of asthma despite being rushed to MBS Hospital here, covering half the distance in a vegetable handcart, with policemen on the way and doctors in the hospital allegedly ignoring his plight.
Both the police and medical authorities, however, denied their alleged negligence in the heart-wrenching incident which occurred on Monday, when Satish Agrawal, a vegetable vendor and a resident of Faithagadi in curfew-bound Rampura area of Kota suffered a severe asthmatic attack.
Agrawal's son Manish on Tuesday said as his father suffered the attack at 11.30 am, he made repeated calls to various ambulance services in the city, but none responded.
As none of the ambulance services responded, I put my father in his vegetable-vending cart and started for the hospital over 2.5 km away from the residence amid the curfew, said Manish on Tuesday.
Though policemen on the way removed barricades at various intersections on the curfew-bound road, none of them thought of helping us and rush my father in a police vehicle to the hospital, Manish told PTI.
After Manish had covered over a kilometre till Nayapura circle on the way to hospital, I somehow managed to hire a private ambulance to take Satish ji to the hospital, said the victim's another relative.
Even at the hospital, we were made to shuttle from one room to another and to a makeshift clinic outside the hospital building before doctors eventually attended on him and declared him dead at 2.30 pm, he said.
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MBS Hospital Medical Superintendent, Dr Naveen Saxena, however, refuted the allegation of negligence in treating the victim.
Satish Agrawal was brought to the hospital in collapsed condition and a doctor immediately examined him in room 125 and declared him brought dead, he said.
Sometime later, the family members of the victim, however, pointed out that the patient's heart was still beating, following which Dr Lokesh Suwalka re-examined him and conducted ECG, Dr Saxena said.
The medical staff did not delay in treatment, he asserted.
On unavailability of ambulance, he said the ambulance service is controlled and managed by the chief medical and health officer, who could not be contracted.
Kota's Assistant Superintendent of Police Dilip Saini too refuted the family members' allegation about policemen ignoring the plight of the patient being carted to a hospital in a vegetable hand-cart.
It is hypothetical to say that the policemen did not help. The policemen in the area did not have any vehicle or ambulance, which could have been summoned only from a hospital or the ambulance service numbers 104 or 108, said Saini.