Indian couple struggles to foot newborn's Dh1.7m hospital bill in UAE

Dubai - The baby has had four major surgeries and a number of complications and infections that still continue to hound him.

Like any other couple, Indian expat Resil Vasudevan and his wife were excited to welcome their first baby after eight years of marriage. However, their happiness was short-lived when they were informed that their 660gm baby had multiple life-threatening complications.
Today, their son Atharv turns four months and 16 days. And in these four months, he has had four major surgeries and a number of complications and infections that still continue to hound him, not letting him out of the hospital. He has been in the hospital ever since he was born, and apart from his bleak survival chances, the couple is now staring at a Dh1.7 million hospital bill that continues to mount until the baby is discharged.
Baby Atharv was born at 24 weeks of gestation at a private hospital in Dubai as his condition worsened on the eighth day and he was shifted to the NICU of a government hospital.

The complications
Resil said: "From bleeding in the brain to a number of back to back infections, my son has gone through a lot. Our ordeal started from day 8 after his birth as the doctors noticed a bulge in the stomach. It was found that his intestines were leaking from four places. It was quite complicated and a part of his intestine was kept outside his body to see if it functioned."
A few days later doctors noticed some clotting in the baby's retina and Atharv underwent a retina surgery that revealed that he had a herpes virus that was causing rashes all over his body. He was then put on antibiotics to deal with the infection.
"His third surgery happened in February, when the doctors put the piece of his intestine that was kept outside his body for more than a month for healing, back inside the stomach. And just a few days back, he had a hernia operation as this is another complication babies who are born so premature often suffer," Vasudevan said.
Vasudevan's wife Sruthy Resil, a housewife, was discharged from the hospital a day after the delivery and now the couple visits their child every day in the evening to see how he is doing. "He is precious to us and we do not want to lose him at any cost. We went through a lot of physical and emotional pain to get him into the world and will do all we can to save him," she said.

The mounting bill
Vasudevan's insurance covered around Dh150,000 and he also got a grant of Dh200,000 from a foundation but apart from that, his current bill stands at over Dh1.76 million.
"My son has remained in the NICU from the day he was born and the cost of that is Dh15,000 every day. Apart from this, he has had to go through a number of surgeries and treatment for several fungal and bacterial infections. Doctors tell us that he is improving and soon we would be able to take him home. But being the only earning member of the family, I do not have this much money to foot the bill so I am submitting my papers in different charities. I do not know when or how I will be able to pay the bill but my focus right now is to see my boy getting well," Vasudevan said. 
A piece of advice
"Although my wife got her check-ups done regularly, we faced this issue because we didn't get her cervix physically examined. All we did was get the scans done from top of the tummy. But from our experience, we would like to advise all pregnant women to also get their cervix examined physically so the doctor can see if the baby is in position or has come down. It was only in the fifth month that Sruthy was examined physically and the doctor told us that she had an incompetent cervix that showed that the baby had shifted down, which should usually happen at the time of delivery. If we had got this done earlier, our baby may have been spared all this trouble."
saman@khaleejtimes.com

• Dubai
• India