The Patan High Court has ordered the Grande International Hospital to pay Rs3.5 million in compensation to the family of Rihan Neupane, a child who suffered serious health complications due to wrong treatment and negligence of the doctors at the hospital.

A joint bench of justices Subash Poudel and Hari Prasad Poudel on Monday ordered the hospital to pay the sum to the plaintiffs, Sanjeev Neupane and Ekta Ghimire, the parents of the child.

Their lawyer Dikshya Kandel said the division bench has decided that the victim should be compensated with Rs3.5 million. “The court officials have told us that the court’s full text of the verdict, however, will come within two weeks.”

“I am informed about yesterday’s decision, but we have yet to receive the details,” Neupane, Rihan’s father, told the Post. “We have taken the court order positively, as it gives hope to all patients that the court will do justice to those who fall victim at the hands of hospitals and doctors. We had hoped that the court would also say something about doctor negligence.”

Rihan was born to Neupane and Ekta Ghimire on June 26, 2018, at Grande International Hospital in Dhapasi. Rihan was born slightly prematurely, at 36 weeks and a day, weighing 2.85 kgs.

From the very moment he was born, Rihan suffered from a series of health complications, which, according to Neupane, were exacerbated by a team of doctors at Grande.

In nearly a year at the hospital, Ekta and Sanjeev watched helplessly as the hospital committed malpractice after malpractice, often due to simple oversight and, at other times, carelessness. In the end, their newborn would end up the way he is today—catatonic.

After the hospital refused to admit there was negligence on its part, Neupane lodged a complaint on May 22, 2019 at the Nepal Medical Council.

The Council, which is the national regulatory body of medical practitioners, carried out a probe against the doctors involved in the treatment and found sheer negligence on the part of doctors and hospital management. But it stopped short of recommending any action.

The Council in 2019 formed an expert panel to probe the alleged medical negligence by the hospital and sought clarification on why it should not face action for negligence in the treatment of Rihan.

The probe team found that administering a high dose of paracetamol to the baby during treatment was a grave mistake. The council also said it found misunderstandings between the radiologists and treating neurosurgeons regarding the size of ventricles and cyst, and that the findings were not clearly explained to the family members.

The probe team also found a lack of unanimity among the doctors involved in the treatment, which, according to the council, shows that doctors failed in counselling, briefing and coordinating.

Radiologists at the hospital had recommended CT and MRI tests after conducting an ultrasound of the baby’s brain, but the hospital delayed the test, according to the council’s report.

The council had also sent a letter to the hospital asking it to put Dr Dipika Dhakal, a paediatrician, under probation and warned Amit Thapa, the neurosurgeon who operated on Rihan, not to repeat a similar mistake in the future.

Dr Chakra Raj Pandey, then director at the Grande International Hospital, however, had defended his hospital and claimed that all the allegations of medical error or negligence on the part of the hospital were baseless.

“The hospital had given the antidote to lessen side effects of the high dose of paracetamol and had taken all necessary measures to mitigate risks. We had also informed the relatives about the condition of the patient,” Pandey had told the Post in 2019.

Neupane and his wife had lodged a case against the Grande International Hospital at the Patan High Court after Nepal Medical Council decided to seek merely a clarification from the doctors involved in Rihan’s treatment.

Neupane said his son Rihan’s condition remains the same as it was two years ago.