18-Year-Old Girl Dies of ‘Medical Error’ at Private Hospital, Family Alleges Negligence
VIJAYAWADA: Tension prevailed for some time at the corporate orthopaedic (MJ Naidu) hospital here after family members and friends of an 18-year-old girl staged a protest over her death due to an alleged medical error from the doctors.
The victim was Lakshmi Venkata Rikitha (18), a first-year B.Tech student of the MIC Engineering College.
The family members said Rikitha was admitted to the MJ Naidu hospital on May 15 to remove the plate implants in her leg during a previous surgery in 2019.
The family members said doctors performed surgery on Rikitha on Wednesday afternoon and informed her parents that she would regain consciousness two hours after the surgery. However, Rikitha was declared dead by the doctors in the wee hours of Friday.
In a complaint lodged by the victim’s aunt, PLV Renuka Devi, with the Suryarao Pet police, the family members blamed the death on the gross negligence of the hospital’s doctor Vamsi Krishna, doctor G Soujanya and other hospital staff while performing the surgery. They demanded action against the doctors and hospital management.
The aunt told Deccan Chronicle that the doctors of the hospital did not disclose the cause of the death. “The doctors and hospital management stated that my daughter suffered body collapse. This could be due to the reaction of the anesthesia injection given to her before the surgery,” Renuka Devi alleged.
Suryarao Pet police registered a case. The district medical and health officer visited the hospital and a probe has been ordered to determine the cause of the death.
Meanwhile, the NTR district DMHO, Dr M Suhasini, who visited the hospital, said the body was shifted to the government hospitals for post-mortem.
