ILBS stops patient’s treatment, asks son to pay Rs 80,000 at midnight

“There is not enough balance in your account to purchase consumables. We had no option but to stop the patient’s treatment. It will re-start only after you deposit Rs 80,000 in cash,” said Dr Shantanu Dubey, Assistant Head Operations cum Grievance Redressal Officer of Institute of Liver and Bilary Sciences (ILBS) in Vasant Kunj. The hospital is an autonomous one of the Delhi government and enjoys the status of a deemed university.

In the video that has now gone viral in social media, the doctor is seen arguing with the son of a 55-year-old woman who was on ventilator. In the video, the son offers the doctor Rs 40,000 cash, some gold  jewellery and his car to restart his mother’s treatment and pleaded to the doctor to give him some time till morning. But the doctor just refused to oblige and said:  “Unless you pay Rs 80,000 in one go, we can’t restart the treatment.” The patient was under the supervision of a team of doctors in this hospital for the past three years and had been admitted on December 30, 2015, after some serious complications developed due to their alleged neglect. “I received a call from the hospital at around 11 pm on January 11 that her treatment has been stopped. The person calling from the hospital also asked me to deposit Rs 80,000 immediately to restart her dialysis,” said Amit Chawala, son of Dharshana Chawala (55). 

“I somehow managed to arrange the money and deposited it. Only then was her dialysis restarted at 1.30 am,” he added. However, on the next day, she was declared dead. 

“She simply complained about loose motion on December 29 but ended up with multiple infections one after the other in the hospital. The behaviour of the team of doctors and nurses was pathetic. While my mother was admitted in the private ward, the nurses asked her to swallow the cough and not to spit it out,” he added. 

Chawala also said that in an earlier instance, it was the same hospital with a different team of doctors who had treated her of Hepatitis C completely and cured her. But ultimately, Chawala had to cough up over Rs 2 lakh, and endure a lot of humiliation and abuses. 

However, the story of Amit Chawala is not a solitary one. 

“My father was in ICU but they stopped treatment as we could not deposit the cheque on December 23. He was put on ventilator for eight days and declared dead on Thursday,” said Sweta Chandolia. 

Her father, Kamal Kishore Chandolia (48), was a railway employee and a CGHS card holder. Chandolia was admitted after a urine infection. The family ended up paying over Rs 9 lakh. The picture in this hospital is very sad and patients suffer not only from diseases but also complain of humiliation and extreme harassment by nurses and doctors.