Suryakanti Banchhor (21) of Chaulia village in Bolangir district is still under treatment in a private hospital of Khariar town in Nuapada district.
The wound on her abdomen still looks fresh. Hemraj, her husband - a contract migrant labour, working in Bilashpur of Chhatishgarh, has already spent Rs 80,000 for her treatment.
"I don't know how much more will be needed," he says. "I have mortgaged the one acre land and the gold ornaments of my wife and mother to meet the treatment cost. I have also taken loan from private sources," Hemraj added.
The wound, which spreads all over her abdomen, is the outcome of a surgery for cesarean delivery done by Dr Sugyani Mishra, Gynecologist of the District Headquarters Hospital (DHH) at Bolangir.
The wound of the surgical incision was yet to heal, when she was discharged by the DHH on May 20 last, after two days of the operation.
The doctor had advised her to open the bandage after ten days of the operation. Suryakanti returned home, but her health gradually deteriorated. The wound got septic and the limbs and body swelled.
A nurse of the nearby PHC was called to open the bandage on the tenth day. "When the nurse opened the bandage, a thick layer of rotten muscles and pus came out with the cloth," said Hemraj. She was immediately taken to the CHC, Kantabanji, but Dr Dilip Sahu, the gynecologist there, expressed his inability to treat and advised her to go to a hospital with better treatment facility. Finally, she came to the Khariar hoapial, where she is under treatment now.
Suryakanti got married a year ago. She visited the CHC at Kantabanji when she got pregnant. "The gynecologist, Dr Dilip Sahu of the CHC advised us for private treatment under him. So we visited his residence regularly for check up, which cost Rs 15,000-Rs 16,000 every month including medicines apart from the ultra-sound test cost of Rs 1,800 for three times. Dr Sahu said everything was fine, but when we admitted her for institutional delivery on May 16, he referred us to the DHH after a day saying that the situation was critical," said Hemraj. She was admitted to the DHH on May 17, where the delivery was done through cesarian section, but the child died after five and a half hours.
Hemraj is a poor migrant contract labour, earning Rs 6,000 per month from his work in a tube well digging company at Bilaspur of Chhattisgarh. He has mortgaged his parental land for Rs 18,000 and gold ornaments for Rs 20,000 to meet the expenses. He also paid for the travel cost of the ambulance. "The service was provided for coming to the CHC and to DHH and back, but I paid Rs 1,000 in total for that," he said. The much acclaimed programme of Janani Sishu Surakshya Yojana (JSSY) of the Government, which should provide all services free of cost for pregnant women and less than one year children, did not come to the rescue of Suryakanti. "I don't know whether it was negligence by the doctors or it was our bad luck that we are suffering so much," lamented Hemraj. He is in distress and under depression due to the burden of loan.The doctors of the mission hospital, Khariar have advised them to not to go for a child at least for five to six years.