On the night of April 3 she complained of breathlessness, her husband, a scrap dealer, rushed her to 4 hospitals covering 70 km between Nalasopara & Mumbai.
Mumbai| The 27-year-old woman from NAlasopara was 9 months pregnant, the delivery due date was April 8. On the night of April 3, she complained of breathlessness. Following which her husband, a scrap dealer, rushed her to four hospitals in over 12 hours covering 70 km between Nalasopara and Mumbai.
The following afternoon, the woman was declared dead. The unborn baby could not be saved. The woman’s death has led to an urgent shutdown of Dhanev, a slum hamlet in Nalasopara, a suburb north of the financial capital of the nation, Mumbai.
As of now, health workers who are tracing the contacts of the deceased are fighting rumours in the area that they are accumulating details for the National Population Register (NPR). As the 25,000 slum-dwellers resist the health workers, they are also suffering from a severe water shortage and shortage of rations.
The deceased woman and her husband lived in a garage-sized room measuring 10×10 sq ft in Nalasopara where they relocated eight months ago from Uttar Pradesh.
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At 2.30 am an auto drove them 40 km to Mumbai’s Shatabdi hospital, Kandivali. After a checkup was done it was ascertained that she had pleural effusion (water in lungs) and she was transferred to Nair hospital, another 30 km away.
Dr R N Bharmal, dean of Nair Hospital said that nobody was ready to admit her. They had to take her. She was in critical condition when she arrived at the hospital in the morning. The doctors took her throat swab.
Within an hour she succumbed to acute respiratory distress. The foetus could not be saved. Later her samples came positive for COVID-19.
Calling the incident “very unfortunate”, the National Commission for Women has sought an inquiry into the matter.
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