Bhopal: In a shocking replay of the the Odisha incident in which a husband was forced to carry the body of his wife for 10 kilometres due to the unavailability of hospital transport, a tribal man in the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh was on Sunday evening forced to carry his pregnant daughter on his bicycle to a nearby hospital. This time too, there was no ambulance on call.
Nanhebhai (46), a resident of Shahpur village in Chhattarpur district, put his daughter, Parvati (22), on the carrier of his bicycle and pedaled six kilometres to reach the nearest government hospital after repeated calls to a call centre set up by the state government for the “Janani Express” (an emergency transport service by MP government for rural patients), were met with no response.
Parvati later gave birth to a baby boy in the hospital. But Nanhebhai was again forced to carry the mother and the newborn on his bicycle back home after hospital authorities failed to arrange an ambulance.
“My daughter developed labour pains on Sunday morning. I frantically called the call centre hoping for the Janani Express. When no ambulance turned up, I was forced to carry her on my bicycle. After her delivery, I had to again pedal my daughter and her baby home because there was another non-availability of ambulance”, the father told DC on Monday.
The state government on Monday ordered a probe into the incident. This is just three days after a pregnant woman in Timariha village — in the same district — was forced to walk six kilometres while undergoing labour pains to reach a hospital for delivery.
