Lilavati Hospital’s Dr Kiran Coelho and her staff are incompetent and a shameful bunch. They took in a perfectly healthy lady Najma Khan for a simple hysterectomy and put her in the ICU in a coma for the last 3 weeks fighting for her life.
Any midwife can deliver a baby, Dr Kiran delivering Mahima Choudry’s baby does not show how good or bad a Ob/Gyn she is. Its cases like Najma’s that show how incompetent and poorly trained she and the entire team that were with her in the OT at Lilavati are. After all this Dr Kiran has absolutely no remorse and is trying her best to brush this case under the carpet.
The ICU Doctors like the head of the ICU Dr Prakash, Dr Ansari and Dr Anil are well trained and competent doctors if it wasn’t for them Najma would be dead by now.
April 2009: It has been 6 months and Najma is still in a coma, and still at Lilavati fighting for her life, while her family struggles to cope with this tradgedy. Her ailing mother wakes up every morning hoping that that today she will see her cheerful daughter walk in through the door. Her 10 year old son cries himself to sleep every night only to wake up a few hours later to cry for his mother again. Her young daughter who has not left her mothers bedside for the last 6 months praying, and yearning every moment that her mother will open her eyes and call out her name. Her husband has put his life on hold and sits in the hospital room, a defeated and lost man. How can a doctor or anybody do this to another human being? How come the doctors in India are not held accountable for their carelessness and negligence?*
August 2010:September 20th. it will be 2 years since Najma was callously pushed into the state she is in now by Dr Kiran and her team of doctors in Lilavati Hospital. Almost 2 years later she is being fed through a tube in her stomach(PEG tube)she breathes through a tube in her neck(Tracheotomy tube), she has a tube placed in her bladder to drain her urine and has to be monitored 24 hrs a day to maintain her vital systems. In other words she is in a persistent vegetative state. No one and I repeat no one can even imagine what she goes through every second she remains like this and what her family goes through trying to deal with this tragic situation.
Feb 8th 2011 News Report in the Mumbai Mirror
Woman in coma due to hospital error billed Rs. 3 cr
Authorities of Lilavati Hospital in Bandra have demanded Rs 3 crore from the family of a woman who slipped into a coma over two years ago, allegedly due to an error on the part of hospital doctors.
Since September 2008, the family of 45-year-old Nazma Khan, from Hy-derabad, has been fighting the hospital authorities through police com-plaints and legal notices, while residing in a room on the high-profile 11th floor of the hospital.
After receiving yet another bill last week, the patient’s husband Mehmood Khan, who owns a tobacco manufacturing unit, not only re-fused to pay the amount, he also wants the hospital punished for the “non-stop harassment” he and his children are undergoing.
Khan’s complaint said Nazma needed to undergo hysterectomy(removal of the uterus) and was brought to Lilavati Hospital on September 19, 2008.The complaint said anaesthesia was wrongly administered, leading to the stoppage of oxygen supply to the brain and Nazma slipped into a coma.
A police complaint was filed against the hospital and after trading charges, a meeting was held between Khan and the hospital trustees, which was also attended by the police commissioner.
In this meeting, Khan says, the trustees assured him his wife will be looked after till she gets well.
Khan and his children - a son who had to leave his studies in London after the incident, and a daughter - were allotted a room on the 11th floor of the hospital, normally reserved for the VIPs.
Things took a turn for the worse when Dr Gudipanda was found dead in her room in December 2008.
Cops suspect she committed suicide. In March 2009, the hospital issued a bill of Rs 1.5 crore to the family, which was contested through a notice sent by advocate Majeed Memon.
More negotiations resulted in an uneasy truce between the family and hospital authorities.
Now, Khan has alleged threats from the hospital authorities. “They told me my bags would be thrown out of the room.
My wife is in such a state because of a mistake by this hospital’s doctors. And this is how they are behaving! Instead of treating her, trying to revive her, they are planning to throw me out. Is there no justice?” Khan asked.
Majeed Memon added, “It is immoral and unjust on the hospital’s part to slap a bill on the aggrieved family rather than finding an amicable solution.
The family is shattered and they have to make Hyderabad-Mumbai trips time and again.”
Khan said, “My business is suffering, my children are tense and life has been hell since my wife was brought to Lilavati Hospital.”
October 2011, Najma is still in a persistent vegetative state, it appears to me that she may be able to hear what people around her are saying but she cannot respond, she cannot move, sometimes tears roll down her cheeks, as if she is in pain or is calling out for help! She is still being fed through a tube in her stomach and she still has to have secretions sucked out of her lungs several times a day. The sad part is that the doctors who did this to her are still practicing and going on with their lives as if Najma never happened!
Mumbai Mirror| Feb 25, 2014, 12.53 AM IST Lilavati waives Rs 8 crore bill of woman left in coma by doctor’s error in 2008
Najma Khan(inset) and(above) Mirror’s 2011 report on how Lilavati sent her family a bill for Rs 3 cr
Mother of 3 was 42 when she slipped into a vegetative state following an allegedly flawed administration of anaesthesia.
A 48-year-old Hyderabad woman, who spent six years in Lilavati Hospital after a botched up hysterectomy surgery, returned home last week with the hospital agreeing to waive off her Rs 8 crore bill.
Najma Khan, a mother of three, was 42 when she slipped into a coma following allegedly flawed administration of anesthesia before the surgery in September 2008. She has remained in a vegetative state since.
In December 2008, three months after Najma slipped into coma, the doctor who had administered anesthesia to her was found dead in her room. Police suspected the doctor committed suicide.
Mumbai Mirror first reported Najma’s tragedy in its February 8, 2011 edition when, in a shocking move, the hospital slapped a bill of Rs 3 crore on her family. Her husband, Mahmood Alam Khan, who owns a tobacco manufacturing unit in Andhra Pradesh, refused to pay and issued a notice to the hospital through his advocate Majeed Memon.
While the hospital then allowed her to continue occupying the suite on the 11th floor and also allotted the adjoining suite to the family, the two sides kept trading charges - the hospital insisting that the family must pay up and vacate, and the Khans demanding that she be treated free of charge and the’guilty’ doctors be punished. A case was also filed with the Bandra police.
Najma’s husband all along maintained that it was due to the hospital’s negligence that he wife had slipped into a coma. The hospital on its part claimed that Najma was provided the best medical care.
In between, there were attempts to bring in doctors from foreign countries to treat her. However, on this issue too the two sides had differences as to who would foot the visiting medical teams’ bill.
But as the bill kept piling up and Najma’s medical condition showed no improvement, the two sides realised that with the case going nowhere, they ought to sit down and arrive at a settlement.
Last Saturday, Najma was airlifted and taken to her Hyderabad residence. The family now plans to shift her to a Ukraine for advanced treatment.
Speaking to Mumbai Mirror from Hyderabad on Monday, Mahmood Khan said the hospital did not do him a favour by not raising a bill. "They have ruined my life; the value of life cannot be estimated in terms of money. Any amount of compensation cannot suffice in such a situation. The fact that I have not explored legal options to claim compensation speaks for itself. I just want my wife back the way she was before being admitted to Lilavatai, " he said.
When Najma slipped into a coma their two sons and a daughter were 10, 17 and 20 respectively.
Mahmood Khan said doctors in Ukraine, who have done expertise in stem cell therapy, have treated such cases before. "They have responded that they have successfully treated such cases. I will first go to Ukraine with an Indian doctor, study the situation and once things fall in place, I will take my there wife for treatment, " he said.
While Lilavati Hospital declined to comment, senior lawyer Majeed Memon told Mumbai Mirror: "It was indeed very distressing and unfortunate that a young woman suffered total confinement at the hospital. The hospital authorities could not succeed in reviving or bringing any kind of improvement. On the other hand, the husband had to make hundreds of trips from Hyderabad to Mumbai to attend to his bedridden wife. Since there was no scope of improvement, it was found desirable that she be shifted outside India for some advanced treatment."
He added that Lilavati trustee Narendra Trivedi intervened on the hospital’s behalf and got the bills waived off. "The hospital authorities with the intervention of their trustee Narendra Trivedi and with the participation of our office team waived the entire bill running into a few crores. An atmosphere of amicable settlement was created for both sides and the patient was discharged with a no-due certificate. Both sides have closed the issue with no further grievances against each other."