Arijit Das, a 16 years old student from Nirbhik district was appearing for Madhyamik 2018, has lost his life in an ambulance, being the victim of ill management of Annapurna Nursing home when he was being transferred to Kolkata from Bardhaman for better treatment. The nursing home authority made an AC mechanic to pose himself as a doctor to accompany him in the ambulance while he was being transferred to Kolkata.
Though Arijit complained of fever a day before his examination began on last Monday, anyhow managed to write three papers. On Wednesday he was taken to Rampurhat Sub Divisional Hospital by his father as with fever he started facing a severe back pain and the medication was not working at all. Nothing could be detected even by the blood test, thus the family decided to take him to Annapurna Nursing Home in Bardhaman. The doctors in the nursing home also failed to diagnose anything but he started complaining of chest pain as well.
Arijit’s family asked the nursing home authority to shift him to kolkata, as there was no sign of any improvement to him health, to which the nursing home did put a condition that a doctor shall accompany him in the hospital, and for which they charged a sum of INR 16000 total, INR 8000 for the ambulance and INR 8000 for the doctor. Arijit’s father Ranjit and uncle Swapan requested to be with the child in the ambulance which they were denied to, but later on, they managed to sit beside the driver while the other family members hired another vehicle.
The suspicion arose when while moving to Kolkata, Arijit required the oxygen cylinder, which the posing doctor failed to fix, rather the driver fixed the oxygen cylinder. However, they ignored the issue at that point of time as for them reaching Kolkata was more important. The ambulance reached an upscale private nursing home on EM Bypass around 11.30 PM after a 3 hours journey, where the doctors declared that Arijit has been brought dead. Sensing the worsening situation the driver and the posing doctor tried to escape but got caught by the family members. When the doctors of the nursing home in Kolkata questioned Sheikh Sarfarjuddin, the posing doctor, he confessed that he is not a doctor, rather an AC mechanic.
An FIR has been lodged in Purba Jadavpur Police station, upon which the driver and the posing doctor had been arrested, and further investigation has initiated against the nursing home. The nursing home tried to defend by saying that the patient’s family requested for the transfer thus they just asked them to hire the ambulance parked outside the nursing home, and they have no more liabilities to that situation. The police also suspect that the oxygen cylinder in the ambulance might not have worked, and the driver is a part of the racket of duping the patients in similar manner.
The unfortunate loss of Arijit’s family raised an important question, how to prevent from getting into such a situation; for that some facts should be kept in mind:
- It is mandatory for a doctor to register either under the Medical Council of India or with the State Medical Council, so one can ask for the identity proof of the doctor. If they deny to show or give some excuses to not to show, do not trust them.
- Nowadays it is not rare to make fake identity cards, anyone can check the validity of the registration of the doctor on the official website of the Medical Council of India.
- If the doctor is registered under any State Medical Board, each state has a website to provide the information of the doctor by his registration number, one just has to go to the website and enter the registration number of the doctor.
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