Posted on 08/08/2012 8:24:24 AM PDT by wagglebee
A newborn baby girl died in India’s northern Punjab state after doctors removed her from an incubator that her parents couldn’t afford. The incubator cost the hospital 200 rupees ($3.60).
A premature newborn girl was in critical condition and needed incubator support in order to live. Two days after placing her in the incubator, hospital officials demanded that the family pay 200 rupees towards electricity charges.
Unfortunately, the baby’s father, Sanjiv Kumar was an unemployed painter and couldn’t pay the amount on time.
“We begged and pleaded with them to keep our child alive in the incubator and that we would pay them the money later,” a distraught Kumar said. “But they refused.”
When the family was unable to pay, nurses took away the saline drip, while officials removed the baby from the incubator, causing her to die three hours later.
“They killed my child,” the baby’s mother Sunita Kumar said. “I pleaded that my husband needed time to arrange the money, but to no avail and the baby was taken out of the incubator.”
The state chief minister, Prakash Singh Badal is currently investigating the “unfortunate” incident at the Civil hospital in Jalandhar. He has awarded compensation to the baby’s parents in the amount of $1,855, curiously enough to pay for the electricity of over 600 incubators.
I was going to say the same thing.
Prematures don’t live very long in third world countries.
About all you can do is keep them warm (which is what the incubators do).
But a lot of times these stories will result in better medical care at the hospitals involved....
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