Sonu Parihar and Rajabeti, who had been looking forward to a child since their marriage in 2018, were over the moon when Rajabeti became pregnant last year. But the newborn baby girl, born to the couple in Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, died after being transferred from one hospital to another. The baby was born on Thursday night at Maharani Laxmi Bai Medical College, the same hospital where 18 newborns perished in a fire last November. Despite suffering from breathing issues, the baby was not admitted to the medical college’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) as it was under reconstruction after the fire.
According to the family, doctors, citing the insufficient availability of oxygen cylinders and available beds, referred her to Jhansi District Hospital but she was again refused admission from there. Hounded by desperation, Parihar took Pari in his ambulance for more than five hours in search of another hospital before returning to his medical college hospital where he himself was denied and the baby eventually died in an ambulance.
Parihar was devastated. “We wanted a baby ever since we got married. My wife finally delivered a girl, and she died within five hours of being born. What should I tell my wife now?” he asks.
The Chief Medical Superintendent of the medical college, Sachin Mahor explained that they referred the baby since they did not have the requisite ventilators for the baby owing to the under-construction work in the NICU. He said, “Rajabeti was admitted on Thursday night, and after we operated on her, the baby had several problems, including breathing issues. Since our NICU is under construction, we referred the baby to the Jhansi hospital.” He added, “Perhaps the baby couldn’t be admitted there either. The infant was dead when the father brought her here. The question of not having a bed doesn’t arise. How was Rajabeti operated upon if we didn’t have a bed available?”