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Denied admission by two government hospitals, a woman died in Kolkata on Friday after giving birth to twins on the pavement, bringing the state-run medical setup under the scanner yet again for alleged negligence.
The West Bengal government has ordered an inquiry into the incident.
It was a night of horror yesterday for the 40-year-old pregnant woman who was refused admission despite possessing health cards.
The woman met a tragic end in the wee hours of Friday morning shortly after delivering the second baby on the roadside near the Maidan area after she was made to travel back and forth between the two hospitals with her husband.
The first of the twins born outside Chittaranjan Sevasadan was also with the couple when they approached the Sambhunath Pandit Hospital for help. The second baby was delivered on the pavement outside Sambhunath hospital 90 minutes after the first child was born.
The Chittaranjan Sevasadan allegedly refused to admit the woman and later the Sambhunath Hospital also turned her away saying she should go to the first hospital where she had visited. An official of one of the hospitals said no case of a woman being denied admission has come to their notice.
West Bengal Health Director Biswaranjan Satpathy said a three-member inquiry committee had been formed to look into why the woman was denied admission to hospitals.
"The patient should have been admitted in the hospital and the incident will be inquired into," he said.
A relative of the woman said she delivered the first baby immediately after developing labour pains around 11-11.30 pm last night. The second child was delivered 90 minutes later.
Leader of Opposition Suryakanta Mishra, who was health minister in the erstwhile Left Front government, condemned the incident and demanded that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who holds the health portfolio, give the responsibility of the department to some other person.
Recently, Banerjee had directed the health department to revamp the state-run hospitals following the death of a large number of children, mostly at the B C Roy Memorial Children's Hospital in the city.
An expert committee had also been set up by the chief minister to look into the infrastructural deficiencies of government hospitals.