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29 March 2024

Rare heart attack in labour room left Indian family with huge bill

Published
By V M Sathish

A UAE-based expatriate Indian driver has fallen into a serious financial crisis after his young wife suffered a heart attack in the operation theatre immediately after delivering a baby in a hospital in Ajman. 

Fifteen-day old Nandini is still not sucking at her mother’s breast, not because she is unwell.

Her mother Nisha Narayanan (36) fell unconscious just after giving birth to Nandini, and suffered a severe heart attack followed by profuse bleeding that threatened to take her life.

Pregnant Nisha suffered a cardiac arrest just after the delivery by caesarian section on March 24.The heart attack was followed by excessive bleeding, which the doctors could not control. She was resuscitated and emergency intraoperative echocardiography and CT pulmonary angiography done which revealed right pulmonary artery embolism. She was put on ventilator and blood transfusion started, according to the GMC doctors who treated her.

Nisha was  in the Intensive Care Unit of the Gulf Medical College, Ajman for 12 days, six days on a life supporting ventilator. A cardiac arrest in the labour room is feared to have happened which is as rare as one in 30,000 pregnancy cases.

Her husband Narayanan, 46, works as a driver on a salary of Dh4,000 per month. He had managed to save Dh8000 for his wife’s normal delivery and sought admission in the GMC Hospital, Ajman, which offers the cheapest delivery package among the UAE’s private hospitals.

Most victims of such labour room heart attacks don’t survive but Nisha did.

“It was only two days ago that I could hold my daughter close to my heart, see her properly and kiss her,” Nisha said, feeling relieved that many mothers who face such post-delivery heart failure and bleeding rarely survive.  “I could see my baby only six days after the delivery. Even now I cannot feed her,” she said.

However, to their dismay, the driver’s family from Mala in Thrissur district in Kerala, India, ended up with a huge hospital bill of Dh85,000 that they will not be able to repay anytime in the near future.

The family has been just released from hospital on the basis of a guarantee cheque pledged by the private clinic where she was undergoing treatment earlier.

Keeping them in the hospital would have caused the hospital bill to go up further and, despite appeals for help, the family is now stuck with an unpaid hospital bill far beyond their means of repayment.

Nisha’s condition needs continued medical treatment and repatriation back home. Narayanan has life insurance but his family is not covered.

Their first daughter, nine year-old Nandana, has stopped going to school because of the family’s financial problems and may resume school only after going back to India.

“We thought a normal delivery would cost Dh8000 maximum, but now we ended up with a bill ten times what we expected,” said Narayanan, who cannot sleep properly thinking about the huge liability.

Besides this, he has to pay a monthly instalment of Indian rupees 20,000 (Dh1,600) for a house loan taken in India.

“Each day spent in the ICU cost Dh1300 per and the 14 bottles of ‘O’ negative blood were used to replenish the blood lost due to bleeding was also expensive. Our first child, who is nine years old now, was delivered normally and we were expecting a normal delivery for which we saved Dh 8000, which was enough even for a caesarean,” said the mother, who is now recovering from post-delivery trauma.

“We want to go back to India and continue my elder daughter’s education. I don’t know whether we will be allowed to travel before settling the hospital bill. We got some help through the ‘Trust Me’ programme of Radio Me, but the amount is not enough to pay the pending bill. Whatever small amounts we got were paid to the hospital and to buy medicines.

“Last two weeks, I could not sleep properly because my wife was struggling for life. I am happy that she survived the heart attack and she is alive to take care of my two daughters. I will not be able to sleep properly for the rest of my life until I am able to repay the hospital bill and settle the house loan in India. With my limited salary, I will not be able to take care of the family if I have to pay the hospital bill’s instalments every month,” desperate Narayanan told Emirates 24|7.

The family is fervently hoping that generous donors will offer a helping hand to enable them to come out of the financial crisis.