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Bengal

Infant death: Medical council suspends licence of Apollo docs for 3 months

Kolkata: The West Bengal Medical Council (WBMC) has passed an order to suspend the licence of three doctors of Apollo Gleneagles Hospital for a period of three months, owing to medical negligence.

A four-month-old child had died in April, 2017, following which her parents had alleged medical negligence. They said on Friday that they are not happy with the punishment and will seek intervention of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee with an appeal for reviewing the order.

The child, identified as Kuheli Chakraborty, was admitted at the ESI Hospital in Joka after her parents identified as Avijit Chakraborty and Shalu Chakraborty noticed blood in her stool. On April 15, Kuheli was shifted to Apollo Gleneagles Hospital near Kadapara on Eastern Metropolitan Bypass for colonoscopy. It was alleged that there she was kept unattended for two days and on April 18, it was decided that the colonoscopy would be done. But before that, Kuheli was allegedly kept without food for more than eight hours.

On April 18 evening, she was put under ventilation following which on April 19, the child died. Avijit claimed that overdose of anesthesia was the reason behind his daughter's death.

Later, he lodged a complaint against three doctors of the hospital identified as anesthetist Sanajay Mahawar, pediatric surgeon Vaishali Srivastava and Subhas Chandra Tiwari, who had then claimed that he was a gastroenterologist. However, it was later found that he was not what he had claimed.

After a few days of Kuheli's death, Avijit lodged a complaint with the West Bengal Clinical Establishment Regulatory Commission (WBCERC), against Apollo Gleneagles Hospital and the three doctors. But the hospital authorities claimed that there was no negligence on their and the doctors' part.

On June 23, 2017, WBCERC passed an order mentioning that the commission had found the hospital authorities guilty of mismanagement and misrepresentation of facts. The commission had also instructed Apollo authorities to pay Rs 30 lakh as compensation to Kuheli's family.

On August 4, 2017, hospital authorities issued a letter to Avijit, stating that they would pay the compensation amount despite no negligence on their and the doctors' part.

Avijit then refused to accept the compensation money and demanded punishment for the accused doctors. After that, several hearings took place and on October 25 this year, WBCERC found Mahawar, Srivastava and Tiwari to be guilty.

Later on November 1, the commission sent letters to the three guilty doctors, informing them that their licenses are being suspended for three months from the date of communication of the order and their names will be removed from the register of the Registered Medical Practitioners.

They have also been instructed to submit their original Medical Registration Certificate to the commission.

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