The incident comes to light a day after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that no private hospital will refuse any emergency patient on monetary grounds.
The Calcutta Medical Research Institute (CMRI) on Wednesday refused to treat Sunil Patra, an emergency patient whose leg had been severed and insisted that the family submit a fee of Rs 50,000 before beginning the treatment, claims the patient's family.
Sunil's family shifted him to a state-run hospital where the doctors declared his leg as completely severed and said "it was too late for a surgery". Patra is now in an Intensive Care Unit (ICU), fighting for his life.
The incident comes to light a day after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that no private hospital will refuse any emergency patient on monetary grounds.
The 40-year-old small-time businessman from Kultali in South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal met with an accident on Wednesday morning. "Sunil was going to deliver crabs to a buyer on his bike when at a turn a truck rammed into him from the side. His left leg was severed all the way from his knee. We took him to the nearest government-run hospital where doctors referred him to MR Bangur Hospital. We thought the Bangur hospital might not be well-equipped to treat his injury so we took him to a private hospital. When they could not treat him, we took him to CMRI in Alipore," Sushil Patra, Sunil's brother, told DNA.
Sushil said that the time of the accident was around 10 am on Wednesday morning and it was 2.30 pm by the time they took Sunil to CMRI. "The staff at CMRI told us that we will have to deposit Rs 50,000 first and that an estimated amount of Rs 40,000 will be required every 24 hours," said Sushil.
As Sunil's family was unable to afford the cost of his treatment at the CMRI, they took him to the state-run Seth Sukhlal Karnani Memorial Hospital (SSKM), at around 4.45 pm. "We had to go through a lot of paperwork to get my brother admitted. By the time we finished, it was 10 pm," Sushil claimed.
Sources at SSKM said that since Sunil's admission to the hospital was done after almost 10 hours of the accident, the damage was beyond repair. "The limb cannot be joined as the damage is beyond any repair now. We have admitted the patient, who is in a critical condition, in the ICU," a senior hospital official said.
CMRI authorities, however, denied that any such patient was admitted to the hospital. "As a process, any trauma patient coming into the emergency ward is first clinically evaluated and a treatment plan is recommended.
Required treatment is given immediately after stabilising the patient and if admission is advised by the doctor then an estimate is offered. At CMRI emergency, we have found out that no patient by such name of Sunil Patra has been received on Wednesday," hospital authorities said in a written statement.
Sunil is a father of two teenaged daughters.
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