GUNTUR: The Government General Hospital (GGH) in Guntur is once again in the news, this time for the glaring carelessness, callousness and dereliction of duty by its doctors and staff. The doctors on Tuesday declared a just born baby as ‘dead’ and handed him over to his parents.
While, the heart-broken parents were taking home the baby in an auto-rickshaw, they observed some movements in the baby and immediately rushed back to the GGH. However, the hospital authorities claimed there was no signs of heart beat during their initial testings.
Doctors attending Bhavani, a native of Dasaripalem in Guntur mandal, declared her baby, born after a normal delivery, as dead as the baby did not cry or shake body parts. They handed the baby to his relatives along with out-pass. But when the baby started crying, his father Jagannatham Nagababu immediately brought him back and informed the doctors, who in turn admitted the infant in ICU.
Meanwhile, the incident created a flutter on the premises of the hospital as large number of relatives of the woman staged a protest denouncing the apathy of doctors and demanded action against them. It is learnt that a team of doctors including Indira, Manasa and a PG student Navya attended on the infant.
Speaking to Express, GGH superintendent Dr DS Raju Naidu said that the baby was born with several undeveloped parts. Against the normal conceiving period of 38 weeks, the woman developed the labour pains in 26 weeks and delivered a under-weight baby.
Against the normal weight of 2.5 kg, the infant weighed just 800 grams and several of his body parts were still under-developed. After physical examination of the baby, the doctors could not find any heart beat and body movement and after keeping in observation for some time, they declared the infant as dead, he explained.
DS Raju said: “With the senior doctors in the ward attending two serious cases, a junior doctor was handed over the responsibility of dealing with this particular case, who tested the infant and declared him dead. Now, we have put the infant on ventilator immediately after admitting him in the ICU and are trying our best to save the life of the baby.”
Meanwhile, Health Minister Kamineni Srinivas has asked for a report on the incident.