Hospitals refuse to admit critical cases, parents cough up money, little respite

HYDERABAD: With many instances of severe dengue diagnosis and children developing sudden complications, parents are being forced to make the rounds of multiple hospitals to get their children admitted for treatment.
In a recent incident, a parent had to rush to three different hospitals in the city to get his daughter admitted. When the first hospital did not run a dengue test on the child, her condition deteriorated.
The second private hospital refused to admit the child as she had slipped `into shock'. In such a condition, immediate response is essential as there are high chances of cardiac arrest. The third hospital that the family approached finally admitted the child.
This is the story of several other parents in the city too. P Latha, who had to rush her child to a hospital after his symptoms like fever, nausea and low blood pressure worsened, said she was forced to approach two hospitals before the child got treatment.
“Since the condition of my son was slightly complicated, the first hospital made excuses and urged me to take my kid to a higher centre. After reasoning with them for 20-35 minutes, I decided to rush to another hospital as they were taking least interest in our case,“ she said. It was later found that the child's platelet count had dropped significantly . In yet another instance, a patient was refused admission citing unavailability of necessary equipment. While many patients are reporting hospitals refusing to take in complicated cases, others say they are being forced to shell out huge amounts for critical care.
“We have seen many instances of parents running out of money after being charged upto `8 lakh by private and corporate hospitals for treating children with complicated dengue conditions. In the last one week alone, we have come across eight cases of children facing dengue-related complications,“ said Mujtaba Hasan Askari, founder of Helping Hand Foundation.