Prayagraj (UP), February 18 The Allahabad High Court has directed the Uttar Pradesh government to form a high-level committee into the death of a woman patient, allegedly due to a wrong blood transfusion, asking it to prevent such incidents and assign responsibility.
The order was passed after the state government admitted before the court that a woman patient at Swaroop Rani Nehru (SRN) Hospital in Prayagraj died last year due to a wrong blood transfusion by the hospital.
A two-judge bench comprising Justices Atul Sreedharan and Siddharth Nandan also sought assistance from the additional advocate general (AAG), who is representing the UP government and the petitioner's counsels, regarding the parameters within which a constitutional court can grant compensation in such cases.
The court passed this order on February 2 while hearing a plea filed by one Saurabh Singh, the son of the deceased woman.
The SRN Hospital is an associated hospital of Moti Lal Nehru Medical College, a state-run medical college of UP.
During the proceedings, the AAG admitted that while the deceased was 'O' Positive, the blood group 'AB' Positive was administered to her, leading to severe post-operative complications and death.
The high court also noted that the medical documents placed on record prima facie indicated that the subsequent treatment given to the deceased was merely an attempt to "offset/counter the ill-effects of the transfusion of the wrong blood group".
Taking a stern view of the incident, the court observed that the Right to Life is a fundamental right enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution of India.
The court said that it is a constitutional obligation on the state and its functionaries to ensure that this right is not violated in any manner. The court explicitly noted that the principal of the concerned medical college was under a duty to ensure that the rights of the patients admitted there are protected, and that the admitted incident clearly reflected a failure of that duty.
Since the state did not dispute that the cause of death was the transfusion of the wrong blood group to the woman, the court observed that it did not need to adjudicate on the issue of negligence.
Apart from this, to prevent a recurrence of such cases, the court directed the newly impleaded director general of medical education (DGME), UP, who is the sixth respondent in the case, to instruct the hospital administration to constitute a committee.
The court said that this committee will be chaired by the principal of the medical college and will have members from different departments and it will collect data and recommendations necessary for the overall functioning of the medical college.
The court added that the committee must ensure that in future, just because of a lack of facilities and the availability of a mechanism to curb such incidents, which may result in the death of a patient, no such untoward incident takes place.
In this backdrop, the court ordered that a comprehensive report outlining necessary "infrastructural or procedural directives" must be submitted to the director general within five weeks. The court further clarified that the director general is under an obligation to provide all necessary assistance, whether financial or administrative, to implement these safety measures.
The court has also directed the principal of the Moti Lal Nehru Medical College to file a personal affidavit bringing on record the committee's report and the response of the director general.
The matter has been listed for further hearing on March 23.
