Daijiworld Media Network – Bangalore (SP)

Bangalore, Jun 8: The National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission has ordered Manipal Hospital Bangalore and four of its doctors to pay a total sum of Rs 5.1 lac to a girl. Reportedly, the right forearm of the girl had to be amputated because of the negligence of the doctors attending her. The amount is needed for her rehabilitation, the commission feels.

The commission observed that the girl now is forced to live her life without her forearm because of the negligence on the part of the hospital concerned and its doctors. The doctors named in the verdict are Meera Ramakrishnan, Vasudeva Rao, Arvind Shenoy, and Jayanth Iyengar.

“The doctors have failed to satisfactorily explain how gangrene appeared in the girl’s right hand. Prima facie, medical negligence caused this disease. Because of this negligence, the girl has faced a situation under which she is robbed of the opportunity to use her right forearm,” the commission chaired by Justice Ashok Bhan observed.

Rani and Alfred Benedict couple had admitted their daughter, Sandria, who was then suffering from cold and cough, into the said hospital in August 2002 at the advice of Dr Arvind Shenoy. Tests conducted on the girl thereafter showed that she was suffering from pneumonia. Medicine was administered to the girl through an injection in the right hand. Because of the negligence shown in administering the injection, blood circulation got blocked, and the girl was infected with gangrene. Then there was no option but to go for her forearm amputation, the parents of the girl had argued.

The hospital and its doctors stood the ground, claiming that they had not committed any negligence in treating the girl. But the commission ordered for the payment of five lac rupees towards education and medical expenses of the girl by the doctors and the hospital, and a further sum of Rs 10,000 by the hospital towards cost of the litigation.