Chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s repeated threats to take strong legal action against private hospitals if they deny admissions of emergency patients under her government’s populist Swasthya Sathi Scheme (SSS) came ‘hollow’ again on Friday. The reason: A premier private cardiac-care hospital in the Alipore area allegedly denied emergency admission of a 67-year-old patient under the SSS despite desperate requests made by his relatives for about 20 minutes. The hospital agreed to admit the patient if the relatives could pay Rs 70,000 as an advance but they couldn’t do so.

The result: The patient died on the way to the SSKM Hospital, hardly 10 minutes away from the private hospital in the Alipore area. Swapan Bandyopadhyay, a registered PWD contractor in Howrah town, suddenly collapsed while sitting in the PWD office close to the Howrah Municipal Corporation (HMC) headquarters on Friday. He was rushed to the nearby Howrah District Hospital where the doctors attended to him and referred him to any big private hospital because he suffered a severe heart attack.

“We along with his other employees in the PWD office took him to the cardiaccare hospital in Alipore area because the state-run Howrah District Hospital is not adequately equipped with infrastructure required for treatment of a heart attack case,” said Jayanta Chatterjee, the deceased’s close relative. “We reached the private hospital around 3.20 pm and contacted the emergency admission staff urging them to make arrangements for admission of our patient under Swasthya Sathi Scheme. But they refused his admission. I made desperate requests to them but in vain.

They demanded cash payment of Rs 70,000 as an advance to admit the patient who was lying inside the ambulance with chest pain and severe breathlessness. Is this possible for any middle class person to cough up such a big amount? We spent around 20 minutes there,” Mr Chatterjee alleged. “Finding no other alternative we rushed him to SSKM Hospital but everything was lost by then. Doctors at SSKM Hospital declared him dead.

He could have been easily saved if the private hospital had given him a berth without con sidering the money. Now, I think the state government’s repeated threats to cancel the licence of the private hospitals on charge of denying admission of pa tients under the SSS is nothing but a hollow promise,” he said, adding that they would decide later on how to lodge official complaints against the private hospital.