Woman dies on road after being refused admission to hospitals in WB

The government medical set-up in West Bengal was embroiled in another controversy today when a woman died giving birth to twin babies on the road after being denied admission by two state-run hospitals despite possessing health cards. The 40-year-old woman gave birth to the twins on the roadside near Maidan in the city late last night after her husband took her first to Chittaranjan Sevasadan which refused to admit her and later to the Sambhunath Pandit Hospital that also turned her away. She died on the road after giving birth to her second child. West Bengal Health Director, Biswaranjan Satpathy said a three-member inquiry committee had been formed to look into why the woman was denied admission to hospitals. “The patient should have been admitted in the hospital and the incident will be inquired into,” he said. [caption id=“attachment_181538” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Reuters”]  [/caption] Leader of Opposition Suryakanta Mishra, who was Health Minister in the erstwhile Left Front government, condemned the incident and demanded that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who holds the health portfolio, give the responsibility of the department to some other person. Recently, Banerjee had directed the Health Department to revamp the state-run hospitals following the death of a large number of children, mostly at the BC Roy Memorial Children’s Hospital in the city. An expert committee had also been set up by the chief minister to look into the infrastructural deficiencies of government hospitals. PTI