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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | 2-day-old boy beats Bengal by Tamaghna Banerjee

2-day-old boy beats Bengal by Tamaghna Banerjee

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published Published on Jul 2, 2011   modified Modified on Jul 2, 2011

If you are born in Narendrapur village of Murshidabad, you’ve to be tough to survive. Even a two-day-old boy knows that.

Monirul Mondal lives, defeating the best efforts of two government hospitals, a private nursing home and several doctors to kill him. Anarul and Marjina Bibi’s son, born after 10 years of marriage, lives, beating the heavy odds on his death over a 279km passage, partly in a trekker and the rest in an ambulance.

Baby Monirul’s journey to the BC Roy Post Graduate Institute of Paediatric Sciences last Tuesday mirrors the horrors of health care in Bengal.

“My son is not even a week old and he’s already been through so much. He is breathing on his own now…. I guess this experience has already toughened him. Where I come from, you have to be tough to survive,” said Anarul, a 34-year-old farmer who earns barely Rs 2,000 a month.

Monirul was born at the Raninagar block health centre, an hour-long van-rickshaw ride from their native village Narendrapur. Marjina had a normal delivery but her son’s breathing was irregular, prompting the lone doctor at the ill-equipped health centre with 10 beds to refer him to Behrampore Sadar Hospital.

“I requested a friend to arrange for a car and we drove to Behrampore, 40km away, early on Monday. After making us wait over two hours, the doctors there said our son had little chance of survival. One of the doctors took me aside and suggested that I try a nursing home, which I later learnt was owned by someone from the hospital,” Anarul said.

The nursing home proved no better equipped than Behrampore Sadar Hospital, though the charges would suggest otherwise. “The daily charge will be Rs 7,000,” a nursing home clerk told Anarul.

Just as Anarul was trying to arrange for the cash deposit, a doctor advised him to take Monirul to Calcutta. “Here I was, calling up people to borrow money and suddenly this doctor comes and tells me that they don’t have everything our child would require. He said we should admit Monirul to the nursing home’s sister unit in Calcutta, where the daily fee is Rs 10,000,” the farmer said.

Top private hospitals like Apollo Gleneagles charge around Rs 10,000 a day for neo-natal care, depending on how critical the infant is.

Anarul decided to go back to Behrampore Sadar Hospital. “Our son was gasping for breath but they wouldn’t take pity on him. They had to save their own backs, so what if my son died?” the farmer said.

By the time Anarul hired an ambulance to bring Monirul to NRS Medical College and Hospital, a five-hour journey across 228km, dusk had set in and Monirul was finding it increasingly difficult to breathe. “Fortunately, we found an ambulance equipped with oxygen cylinders. We wrapped our son in two layers of towels and prayed through the journey. He is our firstborn after a decade of marriage. We couldn’t imagine losing him,” Anarul said, wiping a solitary tear.

The family reached NRS early on Tuesday.

“I was told the hospital didn’t have the required facilities to treat a newborn. I was aghast. How could such a reputable hospital not be able to do anything for my child?” Anarul said.

The doctor on morning duty in the emergency unit told Anarul that his son’s best chance of survival was at the BC Roy hospital at Phoolbagan. “When we reached BC Roy hospital, I was bracing for the worst. What if they didn’t take in my son? I was so relieved when they completed the admission process and took him inside.”

Over the next two days, Monirul’s condition gradually improved even as the hospital’s crib death count shot up by the hour.

Were Anarul and his wife aware of what was happening around them? “We would hear parents crying and immediately say a silent prayer. What else could we do? The doctors and nurses were rude but at least our son was getting a shot at life,” Anarul said.

The boy born in a tough place lives.

The Telegraph, 2 July, 2011, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110702/jsp/frontpage/story_14188069.jsp


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