Bengaluru: Suffering from high fever, cough and breathlessness, a 20-year-old speech and hearing impaired girl found there was no ambulance at a local government hospital in Tumakuru district to take her for emergency care to another hospital in Madhugiri on Sunday. She died while being taken in a two-wheeler to the hospital by her family.
If the image of a man carrying the body of his wife on his shoulder to his village after she had died in a government hospital in Odisha left the nation shocked as it went viral on social media not so long ago, the death of the girl, Rathnamma has left the people of Tumakuru as angry and dismayed.
The daughter of a daily wage worker from Veerapura village, Rathnamma took ill at around 10:30 pm Saturday last and was taken to a private doctor, who gave her an injection. Though she showed signs of recovery that night, her condition worsened Sunday morning, forcing her parents to take her to the nearby government hospital only to find its doors locked. Returning to the private practitioner, they were advised to rush her to the Madhugiri Hospital. “My sister held our father's hand and begged him to save her.
But our government hospital in Kudugenahalli hasn't had an ambulance of its own from the day it opened here and we did not have money to pay a private taxi driver, who demanded Rs 3000 to take her to the Madhugiri Hospital, hardly 20 to 25 kms from Kudigenahalli. I also did not have currency in my mobile phone to call 108 for an ambulance. Finally we decided to take my sister on the moped of one of our relatives to Madhugiri, but she died on the way," recounted Rathnamma's brother, Raju,adding bitterly, "No one should suffer our fate. I hope the death of my sister will open the eyes of the government to the lack of an ambulance in Kudigenahalli hospital and it posts a permanent doctor there. "
He insisted his sister would have survived had the ambulance been available at the Kudigenahalli hospital and she was able to get treatment at the right time. "For people like us who are poor, good healthcare is still a distant dream," he observed angrily.
An old villager of Kudigenahalli revealed Rathnamma was not the only casualty of the government's callousness in not equipping the local hospital with an ambulance." Many others too have died in the past because they did not receive prompt treatment in the absence of an ambulance. This has been brought to the notice of the government several times but it has taken no action. We don't know how many years more it will take for it to act, " he added despairingly.
Efforts to contact Health and Family Welfare Minister, K R Ramesh Kumar for his comment proved futile. His personal secretary, who received the call, said the minister was busy in pre-budget meetings and could not speak.
