NAGPUR: The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission slapped Rs12.30 lakh cost on a nursing home in a complaint filed by a couple, alleging wrong diagnosis of foetus while performing sonography, which led to delivery of abnormal child having short stature and weak immunity.
The forum led by president Sanjay Patil, and members Chandrika Bais and Subhash Ajane agreed with the couple’s contentions that there was deficiency of services and neglect by the doctor couple running Suyash Nursing Home, near Abhyankar Nagar petrol pump.
While partly allowing the complaint filed by Umesh and Shital Panbude, residents of Swawalambi Nagar, the judges directed the doctor couple to pay Rs12 lakh towards mental and physical harassment and Rs30,000 for the litigation cost. They were warned that if they failed to handover the amount within a month, they would have to pay a penalty of Rs300 per day.
The Panbude couple said they had regularly conducted sonography and other tests during pregnancy as suggested by Suyash Nursing Home doctors from July 2010 to January 2011. They were assured that all tests and reports were normal and there was nothing to worry.
The wife delivered a baby on January 14, 2011, after a caesarean surgery and was discharged four days later. She was again told that the baby was normal and there wasn’t any deformity in his body structure. Although she noticed that the boy’s head was bigger than his body, the hospital staff failed to report it on the discharge card.
On November 12, 2011, the kid was admitted to another hospital after his condition deteriorated, where it came to fore that he suffers from a host of problems like skeletal dysplasia, short stature, hypotonic/delayed motor development, acute respiratory distress and congenital dislocation of hip. The complainants even took the baby to Mumbai for a hip joint surgery that will cost Rs4 lakh.
According to the couple, if the doctor couple had pointed out congenital abnormalities in their baby after sonography and other tests, they would have taken a call at that time to abort it. Now, they need to carry his burden throughout their life.
After they moved the consumer court seeking Rs19 lakh compensation against nursing home doctors, the latter defended their treatment and rejected all allegations. They contended that such deformities in the foetus can’t be detected from the sonography reports. They pointed out that there was no history of any congenital deformity or chromosomal history in Panbude family’s history.
The judges observed that the complainant woman had detected anomalies in the foetus when she was pregnant earlier and had aborted it. “Therefore, the doctors failed to take reasonable and sufficient care of her. Instead, they offered lame excuses for their failures. The woman was having a high risk pregnancy and doctors failed to provide proper guidance to her and didn’t properly read sonography reports,” the judges held.
WHAT FORUM SAID
* Deficiency in services & neglect by doctor couple
* Told to pay Rs12 lakh harassment & Rs30,000 for litigation cost
* Doctors failed to take reasonable & sufficient care of pregnant woman
* Doctors didn’t provide proper guidance to her & offered lame excuses
* Lady had high risk pregnancy, but was neglected
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