Even after a sharp upsurge in swine flu cases north India, the death of 34-year old Manish Kapoor in the Org Central Hospital and Research Hospital (Org) in Faridabad has raised the critical questions as to how private hospitals still do not know to respond to this illness.
Kapoor, who ran a cable business in Faridabad, went to Pulse Hospital with high temperature on January 27. Pulse Hospital is run by Dr Rajeev Choudhary, MD (medicine), who was not present on that day. but his compounder prescribed Kapoor a number of antibiotics.
The fever did not subside and Kapoor went back to the facility on January 29 where Chaudhary put him on a drip. Kapoor’s young wife, Taruna says, “The next day he was back complaining of a bad cough. Dr Choudhary put him on a nebuliser. His condition continued to deteriorate and on August 31, we rushed him to the OCHRH where Choudhary worked as a consultant.”
Choudhary said, “He was admitted to the ICU because we found that his SPO 2 (saturation on oxygen) levels were low and he was presumed to be suffering from bronchial pneumonia.”
Kapoor’s condition continued to deteriorate. On February 1, he was put on ventilator and he died the following day.
The question his family members are repeatedly asking the hospital authorities is why his blood test was not done at the very start of his treatment. “When Manish was admitted, the hospital took an X-ray of his chest. A blood test was conducted only on February 1 evening and the result confirming that he had swine flu was given to us an hour after he died,” said Taruna.
Defending his decision to do a blood test five days after he started treatment, Chaudhary said, “We suspected he had swine flu on February 1 which is when we decided for a blood test. The results of H1N1 take between 24 and 48 hours and we got the result only on February 2.”
Kapoor’s family insists that a timely diagnosis could have saved his life, especially, since swine flu is curable but Dr M. Gautam, medical superintendent of Org, claims that the patient was brought in a serious condition and the “hospital did its best”.
Dr Jagdish Prasad. director general of health services, pointed out that H1N1 influenza is treatable with Tamiflu which is available in all designated hospitals. Already, 65 people have died of swine flu in north India this year.