The Uttar Pradesh government has ordered a probe following alleged cases of patients being turned away without treatment from Bareilly's district hospital. State Deputy Chief Minister Brajesh Pathak warned on Monday of strict action against negligent staff. This development comes a day after the Times of India reported that patients, including an elderly woman, were told to leave the hospital. A video of the woman patient being wheeled away on a handcart by her husband was widely circulated on social media, sparking outrage.
Taking cognizance of the incident, the state government on Monday ordered the Director General of Health to depute a senior official to conduct an on-site inquiry at the hospital. The official has been directed to act against those found guilty and submit a report within a week.
Deputy Chief Minister and Minister of Medical Education, Health and Family Welfare, Brajesh Pathak, said, "Negligence in patient care will not be tolerated. Providing better healthcare to every citizen remains the government's responsibility."
Notably, a series of disturbing videos highlighting inadequacy in patient care in government hospitals have surfaced of late. One of them showed a father carrying his child's body in an autorickshaw to a postmortem house since "no hospital vehicle was made available." Another clip surfaced on Sunday in which a patient could be seen transported on a cart inside the hospital.
The district hospital row also shifted focus to another glaring healthcare gap in Bareilly city: a fully equipped 300-bed multi-specialty government facility built at a cost of Rs 73 crore that has remained largely unused, serving almost no patients. Located inside the Bareilly mental hospital's campus, a few kilometers away from the district hospital, it was handed over to health authorities in 2022.
The facility was developed with modern infrastructure such as modular operation theatres, intensive care units, and medical gas pipeline systems. However, the absence of adequate staff has left critical services such as inpatient care, surgeries, and emergency treatment non-functional.
Commenting on the matter, Samajwadi Party member Mayank Shukla said, "The multi-specialty government hospital was built during the 2016-17 SP government and was expected to be fully operational by 2017. The facility also came fitted with modern amenities. Despite this, repeated administrative delays kept it from becoming functional."
When queried about the facility, Chief Medical Officer Vishram Singh said a proposal for a public-private partnership model was submitted to the government, under which the hospital's infrastructure would be handed over to a private operator for management and upgradation. "We'll have to wait and see how the government acts on it," Singh said.
