Coronavirus: The controversy over 'India's first virus fatality'
In the above pictures, Muhammad
Husain Siddiqui, wearing a brimless cap and brown tunic, is peering into the
camera.
It is the last day of February.
Siddiqui has been returned to India after a month-long stay with his younger
son, who works as a dentist in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
The 76-year-old Islamic scholar
and judge look visibly tired. His family driver gave him a bouquet and he accepts it outside the airport.
They get into their Chevrolet
sedan, and head home to Gulbarga some 240km (150 miles) away in neighboring
Karnataka state. They took lunch and tea breaks and drive past forts and cotton
farms on a journey took four hours.
"My father said he was fine.
He seems good, having spent a month with my brother and his family. He asked about his eldest son, Hamid Faisal Siddiqui.
10 days later, Siddiqui was
dead - India's first official Covid-19 fatality.
He first began feeling sick after his return. He died three days later due to gasping for air in a moving
ambulance. Worried family members had ferried him between two cities and four
hospitals in less than two days. after four hospitals rejection, he died on his way
to the fifth, where he was declared "brought dead".
The day after Muhammad Siddiqui died,
authorities announced that he had tested positive for the Corona-virus.
Ahmed Faisal
Siddiqui said, "We still do not believe he died of Covid-19. We haven't even got the death certificate,"
In many ways, the story of Muhammad Siddiqui's death underlines the chaos and confusion often marring the treatment of
Covid-19 patients in India.
Siddiqui was fine on his return
to his two-story home in Gulbarga, where he lived with his eldest son and his
family.
He had given up working five years
ago. His wife had died from cancer since then. He mainly spent
his time in his well-appointed office room with its book-lined shelves his friends said. Ghulam Gouse, said, He was
also the caretaker of the biggest local mosque. and also he was a generous and erudite man.
On the 7th of March, he complained he was sick. The next morning, he coughing
violently and asking for water.
The family doctor, a 63-year-old a local physician had arrived promptly, given him a tablet for a cold and gone
away.
The cough worsened and that night
he slept fitfully. Now, he also had a fever.
On the morning of 9 March, the family took Muhammad Siddiqui to a private hospital in Gulbarga, where he spent 12 hours
under observation.
Here is where the story gets
confusing.
The discharge note from the private hospital says Siddiqui was suffering from
pneumonia in both lungs provided to the family. The examining doctor wrote that the patient also suffered from hypertension,. He referred him to a leading super-specialty hospital in
Hyderabad for "further evaluation" - but did not mention a suspected
Covid-19 infection.
However, a statement+released after his death by India's health ministry, says the
hospital in Gulbarga "provisionally diagnosed" him as a
"suspected Covid-19 patient".
The statement also says a swab the sample was taken from Siddiqui during his stay in the hospital and sent to the
city of Bangalore, 570km (354 miles) away, to test for the virus.
It then put the blame on the
patient's family for moving him out of the Gulbarga hospital.
"Without waiting for the
test results," the statement said, "the attendees [of the patient]
insisted [on taking him away] and the patient was discharged against medical
advice and attendees took him to a private hospital in Hyderabad."
Hamid Faisal Siddiqui said."I don't know why we are
being blamed for this. If they told us to keep my father here, we would have
taken him to the local government hospital. We went by what the private
hospital told us and we have evidence of that,"
But senior district officials I
spoke to maintained that they had asked the family to agree to move Siddiqui to
a local government hospital which had a designated Covid-19 ward. "But the
family members were adamant about taking him away," an official said.
On 10 March,
Siddiqui was wheeled out on a gurney and put into an ambulance where a
paramedic gave him oxygen and hooked him up to an IV. His son, daughter, and son-in-law accompanied him.
They drove through the night and
reached Hyderabad the next morning.
There they moved Siddiqui from
one hospital to another seeking treatment.
A neurological clinic denied
admission and referred the patient to a government hospital in Hyderabad that
had a designated Covid-19 ward. The family waited there for an hour. "No the doctor showed up, nobody turned up, so we moved again", a family member
said.
Siddiqui was slowly sinking in
the sweltering ambulance.
They finally took him to the
super-specialty hospital.
Doctors examined him for a couple
of hours. They noted that the patient "had been coughing for two days,
followed by shortness of breath for two days". He had been given
paracetamol, nebulizer, and was on IV fluids. They "advised admission for
further evaluation".
But, the hospital noted in its
discharge note, that the "patient attendant was not willing for admission
for further evaluation despite risks [to the patient] being explained".
Again, the family insists that
was not quite true. They said the super-specialty hospital asked them to
"take the patient back to the government hospital, have him tested there
for coronavirus and come back".
"We were so confused, we
left the place and decided to return to Gulbarga," a family member said.
When the ambulance returned to
Gulbarga early next morning, Siddiqui had stopped breathing. After traveling
more than 600km (372 miles) on the road, he had given up.
"From the day of onset of
symptoms until his death, the patient has not visited any government facility,"
the official report on his death said.
The next day, his son says, they
found out "from TV that my father had become India's first coronavirus
casualty". In the afternoon, they buried him quietly in a family
graveyard.
Since Siddiqui's death, Gulbarga
has reported more than 20 cases and two more deaths from COVID-19. Siddiqui's 45-year-old daughter and the family doctor were among those who tested
positive. (They have recovered.)
More than 1,240 people are under
home and hospital isolation. A total of 1,616 samples had been tested by Monday
morning.
"Give me some water, I am
feeling thirsty. Take me home," Siddiqui had told his son in the ambulance
that fateful night.
His family returned home, but he
didn't make it.
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