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Palghar: A 21-year-old pregnant tribal woman has died in Maharashtra’s Palghar district after walking seven kilometers from a village to visit a primary health center (PHC) and then return home, health officials said on Monday.
The incident took place on Friday when Sonali Waghat of Osar Veera village in Dahanu taluka walked 3.5 km under the scorching sun to reach a nearby highway from where she took an auto-rickshaw to Tawa PHC as she was unwell . Palghar district civil surgeon Dr. Sanjay Bodade told PTI.
The 9th month pregnant woman was sent home after being treated at the PHC. She said that she again walked 3.5 km from the highway to return home in the scorching heat.
Later in the evening, she developed health complications and went to Dhundalwadi PHC, from where she was referred to the Casa Sub-Divisional Hospital (SDH), where she was found to be in a “semi-comrade condition”.
The doctors treated her as she was running from high temperature and referred her to a specialized hospital at Dhundalwadi in Dahanu for further treatment. However, she died in the ambulance on the way and her fetus was also lost, the doctor said.
She was not in labor and was immediately attended to by the doctors at Casa PHC. Since they could not treat him due to his “semi-comorbid condition”, they referred him to a specialized hospital, they said.
The woman walked for seven km in the hot weather, which worsened her condition and later she suffered heatstroke and died, the official said. Dr. Bodade said that he visited the PHC and SDH and made a detailed inquiry into the incident.
Palghar Zilla Parishad chairman Prakash Nikam, who was at the Casa SDH on Monday morning, told PTI that the woman was anemic and an ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) worker had brought her to the SDH. The doctors there checked him up and gave him medicines, but to no avail.
He said that Casa SDH does not have an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and specialist doctors to treat such patients in case of emergency. “Had these facilities been there, the life of the tribal woman could have been saved,” he said. Nikam said that he would take up the issue at the appropriate level and ensure that such incidents do not happen again.
