The state consumer commission in Maharashtra has directed a civic-run hospital in Navi Mumbai and a Chembur-based hospital to pay over Rs 15 lakh compensation to a woman whose husband died nine years ago due to "medical negligence".

In a recent order, the Maharashtra State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission said while one hospital could not recognise the illness of her husband, the other did not provide proper medical treatment to him. The victim, Datta Sherkhane (40), an employee of BPCL, was treated for malaria instead of myocarditis (a heart ailment) at the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation Hospital in 2010, his wife Swati alleged.

She later shifted her husband to Chembur-based Sushrut Hospital, where the woman claimed that there was a delay in treatment, leading to her husband's death. In 2011, the woman moved the Maharashtra State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission seeking compensation on account of "medical negligence" in treatment of her husband. In her complaint, Swati Sherkhane said, on May 10, 2010, she took her husband to the civic hospital as he was feeling uneasy and feverish.

At the hospital, Datta Sherkhane was provided anti- malaria drugs. But after returning home, he developed chest pain, headache and nausea, she said. Datta Sherkhane was admitted to the hospital where medical tests were carried out on him, she said in her petition to the commission. Swati Sherkhane alleged despite his ECG suggesting critical cardiac abnormality, doctors continued with the malaria treatment. Finding no improvement in his health, she took her husband to the Chembur hospital on May 11, 2010.

She said though her husband was suffering from a heart disease, neither was a 2D ECHO test conducted nor a cardiologist summoned by the hospital. She said cardiologists were called only the following day by which time Datta Sherkhane's condition had deteriorated. Moreover, the cardiologists were unable to come to the hospital in time and Datta Sherkhane died after suffering a cardiac arrest the same afternoon, she said.

After perusal of details and argument placed on record, the commission found the two hospitals, along with their doctors, administrators and medical superintendents guilty of "negligence of duty". It directed them to pay a compensation of Rs 15 lakh with an interest of 9 per cent per annum from the date of Datta Sherkhane's death to his wife.

The panel also told them to pay her Rs 15,000 towards the cost of litigation. "It can be said that the doctors of the corporation hospital could not recognise the illness of the complainants husband. "And, though doctors at Sushrut Hospital recognised the illness (myocarditis), they did not give him proper medical treatment by calling a cardiologist in time, the commission observed in its order.