It was a bustling morning at Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital on July 19. On the footpath outside the gynaecology department’s emergency ward, Poonam, 21, groaned in pain while her relatives cried and begged for help. Poonam was in labour, but the hospital staff wouldn’t attend to her, let alone admit her.
She had arrived the afternoon before, referred by a hospital in Nithari in Noida Sector 30. Poonam was expecting her first child. “We did all the paperwork the same evening. But the doctor just prescribed her a few medicines for pain, and asked us to wait outside,” said Jaysender, Poonam’s brother–in–law, who was accompanying her.
