Mumbai: A family in Jalgaon has been destroyed in mere nine days. But more than coronavirus, it's the public healthcare system that has left the Nehetes devastated.
It all began when Harshal Nehete's mother and grandmother contracted the virus. According to a report in Indian Express, Nehete lost his mother Tina, 60, as she waited for six hours for an ICU bed at the Jalgaon civil hospital.
And on Wednesday, the partially decomposed body of Nehete's grandmother was found curled on the floor of a toilet cubicle in the same hospital.
The report stated that Malati Nehete, 82, had been missing since June 2. Staff at the hospital, where she had been admitted with Covid-19 symptoms, had insisted that "she had simply walked away".
For a full eight days, no hospital staffer had gone to open or clean the cubicle in which Malati's body was found, let alone look for the elderly woman.
The IE reported that the staff broke open the door on Wednesday only after patients in the ward who were using the other cubicles in the toilet complained that they could no longer bear the stench.
Late on Wednesday night, five officials of the hospital, including Dean Dr B S Khaire, were suspended. Sanjay Mukherjee, Secretary, Medical Education, said a detailed inquiry had been ordered.
Before Malati, three other "breathless" Covid-19 patients had died while attempting to reach the toilet in the isolation ward of the civil hospital, the reported quoted district records.
The report stated that Nehete is a marketing executive who lives in Pune. His wife is in the final month of her pregnancy. His father Tulsiram is recovering from Covid-19 in a private hospital in Nashik. No one in the family could attend the funerals of his mother and grandmother.
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