Taken from Times of India.
MUMBAI: A 24-year-old visually impaired law student who fell from a local train in Dadar has alleged that doctors at Sion Hospital did not treat him for nearly six hours, as he lay writhing in pain on a stretcher in the corridor of the casualty ward without so much as a bedsheet to cover him.
Govind Mahaliya suffered two fractures on his right leg after falling off the coach reserved for handicapped and cancer patients of a CST-bound local that had started moving before he could alight completely. The first-year student of Government Law College was on his way to their Churchgate hostel when the incident took place around 9.30pm on Sunday. A few ticket checkers and other passengers rushed to his rescue.
He was taken to the emergency medical room on platform six, where the doctor-on-duty administered painkillers and dashed him to Sion Hospital in an ambulance.
"I was in too much pain to understand what was happening. The railway police made a phone call to my friends," Mahaliya told TOI. "There was no urgency shown to treat me. The casualty area is so cold that I was shivering throughout. But no one bothered to fetch me a blanket or even a sheet," he said.
The Rajkot resident said his college friends, who are his only support in the city, made it to the hospital within 15 minutes of being informed by the Government Railway Police (GRP). "When we arrived, he was being prepared for an x-ray, which was eventually taken around 10.43pm," said Vaibhav Sangya,
one of his friends.
The x-ray revealed that he had fractures of the fibula and tibia. The doctors then approached his friends saying he needed a surgery immediately and that they should arrange for the money. One of Mahaliya's doctor friends, who rushed to the hospital, started asking the resident doctor about the diagnosis
and treatment plans. "I got rude answers. They gave us options of two implants with varying costs. Soon after, they started insisting on Rs 5,000 for the operation theatre," said the doctor friend who did not wish to be named. The family, in the meantime, started hunting for private nursing homes given that doctors at Sion did not give him any treatment till 3am.
Mahaliya claimed that suddenly at 3am he was informed that surgery was not required. "We were told that the surgery was delayed till Monday," he said. The ordeal did not end here. The family started insisting on admitting the patient to which Mahaliya claimed the doctor said that things work at a slower
pace in public hospitals.
His friends managed to arrange for a bed after much nagging around 4.30am. "We were curtly told to shift the patient from the the college building's casualty ward to the hospital building's orthopedic ward on the third floor on our own. There were no ward boys around," said Sangya.
Mahaliya claimed he was not seen by any senior doctor till Monday evening.
Head of orthopedic department Dr Arvind Goregaonkar, though, said that emergency surgeries are never delayed for implant or OT payment. "Patients are kept in the casualty area as it is fully equipped with doctors, diagnostic facilities and the OT for any emergency." He added that tibia and fibula fractures can be operated even after seven days with good results. Dean Dr Avinash Supe also said there was no delay in attending to the patient. "He will be operated in a few days," said Supe.
Source: Times of India.
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