Refused admission by 18, Bengaluru man dies at doorstep of hospital

BENGALURU: “I can’t take this anymore. Please take me home or admit me in a hospital. I can’t breathe.” These were the last words of a 52-year-old man to his nephew at the doorsteps of a major hospital in Bengaluru on Sunday evening, after a 36-hour ordeal during which nearly 50 hospitals — they visited 18 and called up 32 for bed availability — declined to take him in for treatment.
The owner of a garment shop in Vannarpet in Austin town and resident of Nagarathpet, near SP Road, was taken to 18 hospitals in an ambulance over Saturday and Sunday, only to be turned away, the nephew said, listing the names of the hospitals they visited. In addition, he rang up 30-32 hospitals in the same period, and all he received was ‘no’ from those institutions.

The garment trader was suffering from high fever and complained of breathlessness on Saturday morning. According to his nephew, they took him to a reputed hospital on Cunningham Road in an ambulance. The hospital told them there are no vacant beds and suggested they go to another hospital a distance away.
We fell at hospital staff’s feet to admit him, says nephew
The second hospital, too, refused to admit him. The hunt to admit my uncle went on throughout Saturday. Even Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital refused entry stating only after Covid-19 tests would they think about admission. Begging was nothing. We fell at their feet to admit our uncle,” the nephew said.
“At 10pm, we returned home. By then, we had arranged for oxygen cylinders. After an agonising night, we took him to a laboratory in Rajajinagar on Sunday morning to get a Covid19 test done. After the test, our search for the hospitals began. This time, we tried to call ‘powerful’ people. However, nothing yielded. About 8pm on Sunday, we returned to Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital pleading that he be admitted and showed them the acknowledgement of the samples given for the test. They agreed. Before they admitted him, he died at the doorstep of hospital,” he added.
The body has been kept at Bowring and Lady Curzon Hospital mortuary, pending Covid test result. The trader’s two children, aged 28 and 25, are waiting for the report. “We don’t know whether our uncle was infected with Covid-19 or we lost him to an atmosphere of fear created by the virus,” the nephew said.
He said they might have travelled nearly 150km across the city in the two days. “You name all the reputed hospitals, we visited them. They didn’t allow us to enter the building and as soon as we said that there was a case of breathlessness. They said there is no ICU vacant or no vacant bed. We don’t want others to go through this ordeal. The government must find a solution for this,” he said.