Navi Mumbai: Six doctors from Panvel have been charged following the death of a pregnant advocate after a failed abortion, which the doctors tried to pass off as adeath due to COVID-19. The doctors claimed that the deceased was COVID-positive and refused to hand over the body. The results from an antigen test and RT-PCR tests, done a day before the death, were negative, however.

Advocate Ashwini Thavai, aged 36, was around six weeks pregnant and was advised to abort, as she had delivered her last child through cesarean section only eight months back. While she was prescribed an abortion pill, the sonography report pointed to incomplete abortion. At around 8:30 am on May 1, she underwent surgery to complete the abortion at Patel hospital, after the doctors assured that they had all the facilities and it would be a quick procedure. Ashwini’s condition; however, became critical owing to excessive bleeding. The doctors said that she needed a ventilator bed and they did not have one. Around 11 am, she had to be shifted to the ICU at Gandhi hospital. Forty-five minutes later, she was declared dead.

The family asked for a post-mortem, and after the Panvel Advocates Bar Association intervened, the body was released for autopsy. The post-mortem report suggests that the woman died due to incomplete abortion, and also mentions that the victim was COVID-positive. However, negative results were received on May 2 for the antigen and RT-PCR tests done at Patel hospital on April 30, and at Gandhi hospital on May 1. Doctors from a pathology laboratory in Vashi that released a COVID-positive report are also among those charged in the case. An FIR was registered following a court order.

Source: ET Healthworld