Denied treatment by pvt hospital, Hyderabad NGO rescues youth

Hyderabad: There have been several reports on private hospitals being ruthless with patients even when they are in a critical condition and in penury. The Covid-19 pandemic had made the public know to what extremes the managements of private hospitals go for their money. They are denying treatment if the patient’s family fails to pay the said amount.

In one such case, 26-year-old Mohammad Amir, a resident of the Old City, after falling down from the stairs, suffered rupture to his intestine. Having lost his job due to the pandemic-induced lockdown, his widowed mother, who works as an ayah in a hospital, has been the only source of income to their family.

After the incident, the family rushed him to a private hospital near Mehdipatnam where they were asked to pay Rs 2 lakh immediately in order to perform laparotomy surgery on him

As the youth’s mother did not have the amount demanded by the hospital, she began searching for help.“We contacted different persons for help but no one came forward. Then we contacted the Helping Hand Foundation (HHF) and their volunteers expressed readiness to provide us half of the amount immediately,” said Sharif Nisha, mother of Amir.

“Our effort to convince the hospital authorities that we will pay the remaining amount after the surgery proved futile. So we moved the patient who was in severe pain to Osmania General Hospital (OGH). After admission at OGH, the surgery department informed us that they will take up the case immediately and all the tests and investigations were done within hours,” said Mujataba Askari of Helping Hand Foundation.

The OGH doctors began performing the colostomy surgery at 3 am on Monday and completed it by 7 am. The patient was sent to into post surgery ward at 7.30 am.

“If we would not have received help at that time, I don’t know what would have happened to my son,” said Sharif Nisha.

We are proud of our dedicated workforce who stood by the patient the whole night and at the same time, proud of OGH doctors who did a midnight emergency surgery to save a life,” said Mujataba Askari.