Distraught relatives of Mayukh Ghosh at Paramount Nursing Home where the child died. Picture by Kundan Yolmo

Siliguri, Aug. 5: Amid the rising clamour against alleged negligence deaths, a three-and-a-half-year-old boy died in a nursing home today, triggering a wave of protests from social organisations which demanded the arrest of two doctors who operated on the child on Sunday.

The family of the boy, Mayukh Ghosh, lodged a First Information Report with the Siliguri police this evening, blaming the nursing homes where he had been admitted for negligence leading to his death.

Mayukh, who is from Jalpaiguri, died this morning at Paramount Nursing Home after he had been shifted from Maya Sanyal’s Nursing Home a few hours after he was operated on for hernia. The child’s body has been sent for postmortem to the North Bengal Medical College and Hospital (NBMCH).

Sources said Mayukh was diagnosed with hernia and was undergoing treatment at NBMCH since early July. Doctors at the hospital deferred the date of Mayukh’s operation as his blood report showed an increased eosinophil count. However, a blood test carried out at NBMCH in mid-July showed that the eosinophil count was normal. By then, Mayukh’s father Kishore Kanti Ghosh had decided against continuing his child’s treatment there and he took him to Maya Sanyal’s Nursing Home for check-up on July 31.

The child was admitted to Maya Sanyal’s Nursing Home on August 2 and surgery was carried out by Dr Sudeb Sanyal and anaesthetist Goutam Sengupta at 7.30 am on Sunday, August 3. The family did not know that the boy’s condition was deteriorating until Sanyal told them that the patient needed to be shifted to Paramount, as Maya Sanyal’s Nursing Home did not have the facilities needed during such emergency.

“Every time we enquired about the state of Mayukh’s health, if he has regained consciousness or not, the doctors kept on saying he will be okay. We were stunned when the doctor said he needed to be shifted to Paramount where he could be kept in the intensive care unit. My son was moved almost 2 km to the other nursing home around 1.30 pm on August 3 itself,” said Ghosh.

“Dr Sanyal took the initiative and even paid Rs 10,000 for my son’s admission at Paramount. But Mayukh drifted into a coma and died within 48 hours,” said Ghosh, as he broke down. “Don’t ask me anything, I just cannot bear it anymore,” he said.

Authorities at Maya Sanyal’s Nursing Home were not available for comment. Neither Sanyal, who is an accused in the death of six-year-old Sarfaraz Hussain, nor Sengupta could be contacted for comment.

The Paramount Nursing Home authorities said in a statement that the boy’s “brain was not functioning”, and he was in a “deep coma” when he was brought to the nursing home.

The Siliguri unit of the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (ADDR) and the Siliguri Welfare Association have demanded immediate arrest of the doctors. “This just cannot go on. We want the police and the health department to take up these cases before something untoward happens. We want exemplary punishment for the doctors,” said Bibek Sarkar of APDR.