Medical Negligence case by NRI Dr.Saha

Indians and NRIs! Wake Up to fight healthcare Corruption in India

Kolkata, June 30, 2015

• After losing young NRI wife , a child psychologist, Anuradha Saha to a faulty medical treatment in India, NRI Doctor Kunal Saha Takes On Medical Malpractice In India
• NRI Doctor got justice after 15 years when Supreme Court directed Kolkata’s AMRI Hospital and three of its doctors to pay the highest-ever compensation of Rs. 11.5 crore ($2 million) only
•  Dr. Saha gave a sworn affidavit that the money would be used only for the promotion of better healthcare in India, a promise he kept, even though two years later, the out-of-pocket costs of his work in India would force him to file for bankruptcy.

Where there is corruption, there cannot be justice. The first step to fighting corruption is to expose it, and this is a movement in the right direction.

Patients are not helpless and powerless either. If they empower themselves with Information Therapy, they will be able to differentiate between a good doctor and a bad one.

Dr. Kunal Saha, M.D., Ph.D., Professor, College of Medicine and Public Health Pediatrics – Molecular Medicine has been fighting to remove healthcare corruption and to prevent medical negligence in India since the past 15 years.

Dr. Kunal Saha and Anuradha were married in Calcutta, India in 1985. Since the death of Saha’s wife in 1998, he’s devoted his life to holding doctors accountable for malpractice.

Tragedy struck the couple 11 years after their marriage, when she just finished her studies in child psychology and her husband Dr. Saha also completed his training as a physician for a research position in Columbus, Ohio. Before beginning a new phase of their lives which they hoped would include having children, the two decided to take a trip to see her family in Calcutta. “We were ready to start a family,” Dr. Saha said. “She wanted to visit Calcutta to get the blessings of her parents.” And usually, possibly because of pollution, they got a little sick. This time, Anuradha developed a fever and a rash that persisted.

Anuradha was treated by a doctor Dr. Sukumar Mukherjee who had a god-like reputation in Calcutta. But he made a terrible mistake. “He gave her an astronomical dose of the wrong steroid,” says Dr.Saha.

Dr. Mukherjee treated Anuradha with a long-acting steroid, Depo Medrol, with twice-daily doses instead of the recommended one dose every 2 weeks. “I know what I’m doing,” he told Saha. “I’ve seen this drug work like magic.” Instead, it killed her. “Her immune system was destroyed,” says Saha. The medical cause was sepsis, but, he says, “she died of a deadly combination of ignorance and arrogance.”

My doctor friends said don’t do anything, there is no consequence for medical negligence,” he says. But he didn’t let it go. Still grieving deeply, he started People for Better Treatment in 2001. He filed a suit against Mukherjee and three other doctors involved in his wife’s treatment and lost.

In 2009, Dr. Saha filed an appeal, and fighting for more than a decade, he was vindicated. A Supreme Court judgment found Mukherjee and the three others guilty of malpractice and revoked their medical licenses. Later, the courts awarded Saha the U.S. equivalent of about $2 million.

Dr. Kunal Saha in Columbus, Ohio

• Read More