Poor Parents Run from Pillar to Post
Four months after she became a victim of unethical medical conduct and ended up giving birth inside the general compartment of a local train, 26-year-old, Surekha Tiwari along with her husband Sushil (32) are now running from pillar to-post to get a birth certificate for their baby girl Aarti.
After going into labour in the wee hours of October 25, Surekha was refused admission in two health care facilities including the Mira Bhayandar Municipal Corporation (MBMC)-run, Pandit Bhimsen Joshi Hospital (Tembha) in Bhayandar and the Shatabdi Hospital in Kandivali.
This left her husband with no other option but to board a local train with her and head towards a hospital in Mumbai Central. Writhing in pain, Surekha delivered a baby girl inside the compartment when the train was approaching Dadar station. With the help of Railway Police Force (RPF) personnel, Sushil rushed his profusely bleeding wife to KEM hospital, where doctors cut the umbilical cord of the extremely underweight newborn and admitted her to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
While Aarti’s health slowly progresses towards normalcy, the ordeal of her poor parents has not ended as they are still running from pillar to post to get her much needed birth certificate. “Since Aarti was born in transit, hospital authorities at Tembha and KEM have expressed their inability to issue her a birth certificate. I don’t know what to do. I have already exhausted my savings and cannot afford to take leave from work,” says Sushil, a tribal who works as a domestic cook at a household in Bhayandar.