Pregnant women with Covid 19 symptoms, newborns dying in India as hospitals turn them away.

ISLAMABAD -- A number of alarming cases are being reported from different states of India where the hospitals staff were turning away pregnant women with Covid 19 symptoms and refusing to attend to the newborns who required immediate treatment due to certain health complications.

The apathy and inhuman treatment led to a number of deaths which also posed a big question mark on the working of health sector in India, which is now crumbling under the increasing number of coronavirus infected patients.

A 30-year-old woman in the eighth month of her pregnancy had died in an ambulance after eight hospitals in India either referred her to another facility as she showed symptoms of Covid-19 or cited lack of beds. The woman and her family were on the road for 13 hours when she breathed her last.

According to the Times of India(TOI) report published earlier in the month, this is not the first time patients have found themselves being turned away by hospitals in Noida while Covid-19 protocols are in place. On May 24, a pregnant woman was allegedly denied treatment by the Sector 30 district hospital and told to go to a hospital in Ghaziabad, as she lived in Khoda, which is sealed.

In another case the next day, a newborn died after failing to get admission in an NICU for seven hours, even as his father went to at least four hospitals, including the District Hospital.

The episode jolted the Noida administration. Narendra Bhooshan, nodal officer for Covid-19 response in Noida, admitted this was a growing concern.

Neelam Kumari, a resident of Ghaziabad's Khoda Colony, and her family shuttled from one hospital - first in an auto and then an ambulance - beginning around 6am on Friday.

When she began experiencing labour pain, Neelam's husband Bijendra, who works in the maintenance department of a media firm, his brother Shailendra Kumar, an auto driver, and his wife Sushma rushed her to ESIC Hospital in Noida's Sector 24. For this, they used Shailendra's auto.

Neelam, who worked at a wire manufacturing company, had an ESI card. 'ESIC hospital took her in for some time and gave oxygen, and then referred her to the District Hospital in Sector 30. But the staff there didn't admit her and told us that since we had come from Khoda, which is a containment...