After a video of a man carrying his wife on a cart to a hospital in Uttar Pradesh's Ballia went viral on social media, Deputy Chief Minister Brajesh Pathak ordered a probe into the matter, officials said on Tuesday. The incident took place in Andaur village of the district, they said.
In the video, Sakul Prajapati, a resident of the village in Chilkhar block was seen carrying his ailing wife Jogni (55) to the hospital on a cart. Chief Medical Officer Neeraj Pandey said the deputy chief minister has ordered the director-general of medical and health to probe the matter.
On March 28, Prajapati took his wife to a health center -- three kilometers away from his house -- on the cart as he was unable to find a ride. The doctors there gave some medicines and referred his wife to the district hospital, he said. He left his wife on the cart at Piyaria village and returned home to take clothes and money and then took her to the hospital on a mini-truck, he said.
His wife died during treatment in the hospital, according to police. Prajapati claimed the death took place at around 11 pm and the hospital refused to provide an ambulance to take the body home, saying the service was not available at night. He then hired a private ambulance for Rs 1,100. Meanwhile, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav targeted the state government over the "lack" of adequate health facilities in the state.
Tagging news report of the Ballia incident and a photo in which a man could be seen carrying an elderly patient in his arms to the hospital allegedly due to lack of a stretcher, Yadav said in a tweet that the BJP government in the state was not spending enough on the health sector.
"Even if a small part of what is being spent on false advertisements of achievements in the health sector in UP would have been allocated for medical services that saw a huge improvement during the SP rule, people dying due to lack of stretchers and ambulances under the BJP government could have been saved," Yadav said in a tweet in Hindi.
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