A 64-year-old man was refused COVID-19 treatment by three hospitals on the 21st of July 2020, after repeated intimation about the seriousness of the situation. The patient’s family does not wish to reveal his name due to certain personal reasons.
Fitting into the perfect frame of uncertain times, this family was already aware of the fact that the patient had contracted the virus, due to the evident unmasking of the symptoms from the 15th of July. The patient’s family, like responsible citizens, immediately got the patient tested for COVID-19. The family, due to an understandable confusion as to how to regulate the symptoms the patient was showing, started Ayurvedic treatment from the 16th of July. This family, being ultra-conservative and being deeply rooted in the private sacrosanct of the temple, went to pray at one of the most widely known temples of Kolkata – Maa Kamakhya Pith Seba Sangh on the 21st of July during daytime. It was then that they got a call from home. The patient’s Oxygen saturation level was being monitored. He had, by then, lost his sense of taste and had started showing signs of severe weakness. His Oxygen saturation level declined to 87. The family immediately called up the much acclaimed ‘Charnock Hospital’ located at New Town Approach Road. The hospital, apart from demanding an advance payment, refused to admit the patient because apparently without a report declaring the patient COVID-19 positive, they did not have the jurisdiction to take in any patient. The hospital gave an excuse of how there are divisions made while admitting oneself to the hospital. They then called the Desun and the Apollo hospitals respectively. Both the hospitals demanded an advance payment of a handsome sum of money. According to the patient’s family, these hospitals refused treatment or admission on grounds of a certain "over-occupation" of beds. The family was notified by Desun that there would be a comfortable availability of 2 beds after an hour. Exactly 1 hour later, the family got a call from ‘Nabanna’ – the Chief Minister’s office, notifying them about the patient’s report. The patient had tested COVID-19 positive. They were about to get engaged in a vicious cycle. They went back to square one and approached Charnock Hospital once again, but the excuse this time was the lack of beds. In desperate action, they called Desun hospital once again, but they slapped the excuse of a similar over-occupation of beds. The patients who were supposed to vacate the beds, did not do so within the time frame given by Desun. “This is a stark evidence of mismanagement and poor administration”, as claimed by the patient’s family. They approached two more hospitals before they finally approached ILS, Nagerbazar. The patient was admitted and they consulted the suggested doctor. The doctor suggested the family to keep Oxygen cylinders at home, prescribed certain medicines and told the patient to monitor his symptoms. 10 days in, by the 31st of July, the patient had a normal oximeter reading of 95, had got back his taste and had almost recovered from this deadly disease in no time.
It is almost a staple pattern that has been established by hospitals in Kolkata. Either, COVID-19 patients have to sit back at home and take precautionary measures, or they have to pay a sizeable sum of money and be treated at the hospital. Refusal of treatment is prevalent in all hospitals today and an individual is in a very uncertain spot if this disease spreads its deadly tentacles over him/her. There are two things to be understood here; one, that hospitals always have a bag of excuses ready to refuse treatment to patients, which is extremely detrimental to public health and trust in the institution and two, that it has become a monopoly, wherein hospitals suck out their profit from the helplessness of the patients. This is the root of an unnecessary evil in society, and this is the very overlapping juncture of distrust in an institution which has historically been held in very high regard.
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