The Delhi Police on Sunday sent a notice to Max Hospital in New Delhi’s Shalimar Bagh after it incorrectly declared a newborn baby dead, NDTV reported. The police have asked the hospital authorities to send details of the incident and be available for questioning.
The baby and his twin sister were born at the hospital on Thursday morning. But the hospital said that the premature twins were stillborn. The family has alleged that the babies were handed to them in a plastic bag. When the parents were on their way to a crematorium to perform their last rites, they found that the boy was still alive.
The hospital then told the parents that the surviving baby would need critical care in an incubator, at a cost of Rs 1 lakh per day for three days, and Rs 50,000 thereafter for three months. “We were made to sign an undertaking that there were no chances of survival but as long as there is a heartbeat, my son should receive medical treatment and we would bear all expenses,” the baby’s mother Varsha had told NDTV on Saturday.
Delhi Health Minister Satyender Jain said that the hospital’s licence could be cancelled if it is found guilty of negligence. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday demanded a law to “check negligence and loot” by private hospitals.
Meanwhile, unidentified authorities at Max Hospital said that an expert group had been set up to investigate the circumstances of the premature delivery of the twins, and how they were incorrectly declared dead, ANI reported.
Corrections and clarifications: An earlier version of the story erroneously said that the baby died after he was taken to a smaller hospital for treatment. The error has been corrected.
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