Ailing woman, brought to hospitals on trolley rickshaw, dies
BHUBANESWAR: A woman from Puri, who was brought by her husband to SCB Medical College and Hospital on Friday on a rented trolley rickshaw, died in the premier government hospital on Sunday.
In an incident that brought back reminders of the horrific Dana Majhi incident in Kalahandi district in 2016, 70-year-old Kabir Bhoi, a resident of Sakhigopal in Puri, pulled his cancer-stricken wife Sukanti to the Cuttack hospital on the trolley rickshaw — covering over 90km — as he did not get any ambulance, nor did he have the money to pay for an auto.
The elderly Bhoi blamed the long, back-breaking journey for his wife’s eventual death. “So much valuable time was lost as I travelled with her in the trolley rickshaw. If I were able to bring her in an ambulance or auto-rickshaw, she might have been alive now,” he alleged.
Sources said Kabir had first taken his wife to the district headquarters hospital in Puri on Thursday. The doctors there referred her to SCB Medical College and Hospital after her condition deteriorated. He tried to hire an auto-rickshaw, but could not afford the Rs 1,200 needed.
“I was in distress due to the deteriorating health of my wife. After the doctors at the Puri hospital told me to take her to SCB, I tried to hire an auto rickshaw. They sought Rs 1,200, but I could not pay that much. I then rented the trolley rickshaw for Rs 50 per day and brought her to Cuttack,” he said.
Social workers in Cuttack on Friday spotted the man pedalling his wife and helped the couple reach the hospital. “The woman could not walk. Her hands and legs were swollen,” social worker Abhimanyu Das, who helped the couple, said.
Emergency officer at SCB Medical College and Hospital, Bhubananda Maharana, said the patient was immediately attended to and several tests carried out as per the advice of the doctors on duty.
“The woman was suffering from liver cancer. At noon on Sunday, her condition deteriorated and she died at 12:20 pm,” Maharana said. Her passing accorded a semblance of dignity to Sukanti; her body was taken back to Puri in a mahaprayan vehicle (government-run hearse).