SSKM Hospital: A four-year-old boy from Nadia who had swallowed a one-rupee coin gasped for breath for around 15 hours and was taken to five government hospitals, including two in Calcutta, in vain before being operated on at SSKM Hospital.

Relatives accompanying the child, Arghya Biswas, said they were told at all five hospitals that there were no doctors to perform the procedure to extract the coin.

One city hospital — Calcutta Medical College and Hospital — denied the allegation. The other, NRS Medical College and Hospital, could not be reached for comment.

The head of the ENT department at SSKM, Arunabha Sengupta, told Metro the boy could have died while being taken from one hospital to another. “The coin was stuck in the throat, where the food pipe and the wind pipe branch out. At any point in transit the coin could have moved and blocked the windpipe completely, killing the boy instantaneously,” said Sengupta, whose team performed the surgery to extricate the coin.

The Bengal government has taken a series of steps to strengthen health care in the districts so that critical patients need not be rushed to Calcutta. But the ordeal Arghya had to suffer shows that little has changed.

The child lives at Gangnapur village in Nadia’s Ranaghat sub-division with his grandmother and aunt. His mother is no more, while father Abhijit works as a cook at a restaurant in Bangalore.

Arghya swallowed the coin in front of his grandmother around noon on Saturday. “He immediately started gasping for breath,” said Dinesh Mondal, a relative.

The child, Mondal said, was first taken to a government hospital nearby, where a doctor told the relatives that there was no surgeon to take out the coin.

The relatives hired a car and took the child to Ranaghat Sub-divisional Hospital around 1.30pm. An X-ray was done, after which a doctor said the hospital lacked the infrastructure for the surgery and referred the boy to the College of Medicine and JNM Hospital in Kalyani.

The group reached the Kalyani hospital around 4pm. “After nearly one-and-a-half-hours, doctors there referred the boy to NRS Medical College and Hospital,” said Jyotsna Halder, the aunt who has been taking care of Arghya since his mother died a year ago.

The relatives and the child boarded a Sealdah-bound train at Kalyani in the evening and reached Calcutta around 10.15pm. Arghya was taken to NRS hospital, where doctors advised an X-ray. “After seeing the X-ray plate, the doctors said a surgeon who could perform the procedure would only come on Monday morning,” said Mondal.

“We were told to take the boy to Calcutta Medical College and Hospital. The doctor who was talking to us was rude,” said Mondal.

The group reached Calcutta Medical College around 11.20pm. “The doctors were ready to admit the child but said a surgeon would not be available before next morning. They asked us to go to SSKM and find out whether the operation could be performed immediately,” said Jyotsna.

A health department official said senior doctors, including surgeons, were on call at night and could be summoned whenever needed.

“We decided to try our luck at SSKM. The boy had stopped speaking by then and at one point we thought we were losing him,” Mondal said.

The group reached SSKM Hospital’s emergency ward around 1am. There they were joined by a couple who they met on the train on their way to Calcutta.

The doctors at SSKM examined the X-ray plates and referred the patient to the ENT male ward for admission. Soon after, Arghya was taken to the operating theatre.

The procedure ended — and the child could breathe normally again — around 3am, close to 15 hours after he had swallowed the coin.

The head of the ENT department at Calcutta Medical College and Hospital, Ramanuj Sinha, denied the relatives were asked to take the boy to SSKM or that surgery could not be done at night.

“Doctors of my department had written ‘immediate admission’ on the prescription. We don’t know why they took away the patient,” he said.

The director of health services, Ajay Chakraborty, cited lack of specialist doctors when asked why three hospitals in Nadia had turned away the child.

Arghya’s X-ray shows the coin stuck in the throat, where the food pipe and the wind pipe branch out. File