Md Joynal Abedin Khan :
Dhanmondi General and Kidney Hospital in Dhaka has reportedly extorted a family by keeping the body of their newborn daughter in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for four days, family sources alleged.
Even the doctors and nurses of the hospital did not allow any relative to visit the newborn with an ill motive to extort money, they claimed. They showed extra formalities for concealing the cheating under the name of the additional security of the hospital, they alleged. However, the hospital authorities have denied the allegations.
The family members raised a suspicion over the baby’s condition centering the abnormality of the physician, nurses and guards. Even they did not permit to shift the baby to Dhaka Shishu Hospital till September 22, they added.
Following massive insisting of the father to visit the baby, the doctors on duty in the hospital confessed the baby had already died, according to them.
The baby’s parents filed a complaint with Dhanmondi Model Police Station on September 25, said the OC of the police station.
Police did not take action as the victim family and hospital authorities resolved the problem through arbitration, the OC said. The family sources claimed that they were bound to withdraw the complaint
But the hospital authorities denied the allegations of the deceased’s family members.
“We admitted the baby to that hospital around 11:40pm on September 19. We tried to shift the baby to Dhaka Shishu Hospital on September 22, but doctors on-duty there told us that the baby had already died,” claimed the baby’s aunt Hasina Begum.
The baby’s father, Shahid Hossain said, “The baby girl was born through surgery at a clinic in Old Dhaka on September 19. The newborn suffered breathing problems, so we admitted her to the Dhanmondi General and Kidney Hospital the same night.
“The baby was kept under life support at the ICU from September 19 to September 22, and the hospital billed us Tk 54,000 for the service. I paid the hospital Tk35,000 after negotiations,” Shahid said.
Meanwhile, Dhanmondi Kidney and General Hospital Director Shamim Mahbub said, “The baby was kept under life support, as her heart was not functioning properly. The newborn died because of her health complications.
“We do not keep body in the ICU just to make more money,” he claimed.
Earlier in February 11 in 2016, Japan Bangladesh Friendship Hospital in Dhaka was accused of claiming to have formed a medical board to treat a baby a full day after it had died.
RAB took custody of the body of the one-and-a-half-year old Sumaiya Saba at the hospital in Dhanmondi
The Rapid Action Battalion’s mobile court’s Executive Magistrate Helal Uddin had fined the hospital Tk 11 lakh for the irregularities.
