Accident victim dies after being taken from one hospital to another

Ajay was taken from one hospital to the other. The police first took him to a nearby hospital, from where he was taken to Sion Hospital and subsequently to KEM Hospital. Each hospital told them they were not equipped to treat the man. He died on June 10 in KEM Hospital

MUMBAI: On the night of June 6, Radhika Adagale waited till 1 am for her nephews Ajay and Ajinkya to cut her birthday cake.

Accident victim dies after being taken from one hospital to another

She finally threw away the cake around 1 am after a long wait for the two brothers. What she did not know was at the time, Ajay had met with an accident and was lying on the road just a kilometre away from their home, in Kannamwar Nagar, Vikhroli East , while Ajinkya had gone out to look for his younger brother.

Ajay Adagale, 22, who worked at a car washing centre in Bhandup, had met with a hit-and-run accident around 1 am on June 6 on the Eastern Express Highway.

What followed was Ajay being taken from one hospital to the other. The police first took him to a nearby hospital, from where he was taken to Sion Hospital and subsequently to KEM Hospital. Each hospital told them they were not equipped to treat the man. He died on June 10 in KEM Hospital.

After the accident, some police officers had taken Ajay to the nearby BMC-run Ambedkar Hospital in Tagore Nagar, Vikhroli. As he had serious head injury, he was referred to Sion Hospital, where admission was refused as the hospital officials said they had no ventilator.

They referred him to KEM Hospital in Parel, where he was admitted after a wait of around three hours. The young man died at the civic hospital while undergoing treatment.

“Lot of time was wasted in moving my brother between hospitals right after the accident. All the hospital authorities or doctors were dismissive of our concerns. What was a part of their routine work was a question of life and death of the only earning member of our family,” said Ajinkya.

He blamed the insufficiencies in the public hospital system in the city for the death of his brother.

The family claimed that at Ambedkar hospital, doctors told them they were not equipped to deal with a severe medical emergency like that of Ajay.

“They said they could not even provide us the ambulance to move him to the other hospital. We had to call 108 and hire an ambulance at our own expense,” said Ajinkya.

Ajinkya eventually took his brother in an ambulance and reached Sion Hospital around 4 am but were told to go to KEM Hospital immediately.

“At that point, we had to fight with the ambulance driver to help us take Ajay to KEM Hospital. He said he only had orders to leave the patient in Sion Hospital and could not make the decision to extend the trip on his own,” said Ajinkya.

He added that it took a lot of persuasion and calls to the driver’s superiors for them to reach KEM Hospital, where they reached around 5.30am.

“We again had to fight with the staff at KEM Hospital even for Ajay to be admitted, forget immediate medical attention. They told us that there was no CT scan machine available there, so we may as well go to a private hospital,” said Radhika. She said that it was almost three hours until Ajay was finally admitted in KEM Hospital.

He, however, was on a stretcher for the entire hospital stay, they said. “Sometimes, flies would swarm around the wounds on his head. We had to constantly swat the flies away. We were also told to buy every single thing that was needed — right from the cotton and tubes, the plaster to the ambu bag,” said Radhika.

Ajinkya, who goes to a bar tending school, was grateful for his brother’s initiative to take the family’s financial responsibility as he finishes off the course. “Now, I will have to look for a job and study alongside,” he said.

Their father Narayan, an electrician, died two years ago. Their mother Lata used to work in the housekeeping section in a corporate office but had to stop working a year ago due to poor health.