On Sunday, March 26, 12 children were taken ill after being administered ‘antibiotics’ at the state-run Gandhi Hospital in Secunderabad. Now, investigators aren’t sure what the children were even given – what was supposed to be Amoxiclav could have instead been phials of expired Sodium Sulphate.
The hospital has been in the headlines – twice in a short span of two months. Just two weeks before, a patient was forced to borrow his son’s toy tricycle to transport himself between floors – as he couldn’t afford the bribe money the ward boys were charging for a wheelchair. Suffering burn injuries from electrocution in August, his wife has been bringing the tricycle to each of his follow-up visits.
The hospital is one of the largest government hospitals in the city, catering to more than 2000 inpatients every day with only 1,100 beds. The situation, like in many hospitals, is bad enough that patients often sleep on the pavement – waiting for their turn.
In Orissa, last year an impoverished man had to carry his wife’s dead body on his shoulders and walk for over 12 kilometres after the hospital failed to provide an ambulance to take the body back to his village.
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