Son dies of rabies as cop made to run around hospitals for bed

Son dies of rabies as cop made to run around hospitals for bed

Ahmed.Ali@timesgroup.com

Mumbai: City traffic constable Sandeep Surve lost his seven-year-old son to rabies early on Friday despite ensuring he got all the vaccines after a rabid dog bit him on December 26. What came as a double-whammy for Surve was the difficulty in getting a hospital bed for his only son Arnav—in seven hours from 8.30pm on Thursday he went through four hospitals.

Surve finally called the main police control room and DCP Rashmi Karandikar intervened to get a bed for the child in the civic-run Nair Hospital, Agripada, around 3.30am on Friday. The child was declared dead half an hour later. “For the first time, I realized how difficult life is for the common man,” said Surve. “Precious time was wasted because no one detected rabies and gave different medicines. I am hurt that government hospitals such as Kasturba and Nair don’t have treatment and, above all, they refused to even admit Arnav,” said Surve who said he wants to take legal action against doctors.

Rabies is a highly infectious disease that is almost always fatal; only six patients across the world have been documented to have survived it.

Boy was bitten by dog during his Karjat visit

In fact, Nair Hospital didn’t conduct Arnav’s postmortem because of the infectious nature of the virus. “Our PICU where Arnav was admitted for a short time had to be fumigated to limit exposure to other patients,” said a senior doctor.

Arnav, a student of Thane Police school in Kalwa, was bitten by a rabid dog on his face and body when he visited his grandparents’ home in Karjat on December 26. “He was immediately taken to Khopoli public hospital, but it didn’t have anti-rabies injections,” said Surve’s friend Manoj Mane. Arnav was then taken to Khopoli Nursing Home where he stayed for a few days.

Arnav resumed school, but got fever on January 14. He was taken to Shreenika Hospital in Thane where he was given medication for viral fever. The family took him to Samarth Hospital the next day where Mane said he was treated for tonsilitis and discharged the next day. When contacted, Dr Rajan Relekar of Samarth Hospital said he had advised the family to take their child to a pediatrician. “The child had obvious bite marks on his face and we had given him a part of the rabies shot regimen as well, so why would we say tonsilitis?” he said.

The Surves took Arnav to Shreenika Hospital on January 17 (Wednesday). “This hospital also failed to identify the rabies fever and discharged him in a day and asked us to take him to some big hospital without telling us what was wrong,” said Surve. When contacted, Dr Neeta Adsul from Shreenika Hospital said the child came walking to the hospital. “The next morning, he spoke to my nurses and asked for coffee and for the bedsheets to be changed,” she said. It was only after vomiting around noon that his condition began to deteriorate. “He was increasingly drowsy, prompting us to recommend that he be moved to a big hospital,” she said, adding that her nursing home didn’t have an ICU or a ventilator facility.

It was 8.30pm on Thursday when the Surves left Shreenika Hospital for Fortis Hospital in Mulund, but they refused to admit him. A Fortis Hospital spokesperson told TOI: “Fortis does not have the facility to treat rabies. The patient was taken to Kasturba Hospital for immediate specific treatment in a private ambulance arranged by Fortis Hospital.”

At the BMC-run Kasturba Hospital near Arthur Road Jail, the doctors asked them to rush to Nair Hospital near Mumbai Central. “We rushed to Nair but they too refused. I got so tired that I called up the main control room,” said Surve. Kasturba is affiliated to Nair Hospital and all serious cases are rushed to the latter hospital, which is bigger.

When contacted, Nair Hospital dean Dr Ramesh Bharmal denied there was any delay in admitting the child. “I got a call from a former colleague about the child and had instructed my staff to attend to him immediately,” said Dr Bharmal. He said the child’s initial treatment had left a lot to be desired. Another doctor said that there had been a delay in the child getting the immunoglobulin shot.

Infectious diseases specialist Dr Om Shrivastav told TOI: “Once bitten, the virus travels from the site to the brain in a fixed period of time. It could take a few hours if it is closer to the brain or could take weeks if the bite is near the feet.”

(With inputs by Malathy Iyer)