A four-year-old girl died in Madhya Pradesh’s Ratlam district after her parents were forced to take her to the government hospital on a motorcycle as there was no ambulance available, The Indian Express reported on Friday.

The child, who was suffering from pneumonia, was admitted to a government hospital in Sailana town on Monday evening. When her condition worsened, doctors asked her to be shifted to the district hospital in Ratlam, but her father Ghanashyam Nath told The Indian Express there was no ambulance available to help them.

Nath then called a friend who had a motorcycle. The friend rode the family to the hospital in Ratlam, with Nath and his wife riding pillion, holding the child’s IV fluid bottle connected to her hand. Their daughter died soon after they reached the hospital in Ratlam.

“The girl was suffering from acute pneumonia,” said RC Damor, who is in-charge of the Government Children’s Hospital in Ratlam. “She died as she was not brought to the hospital in time. Treatment was started immediately, but she could not be saved.”

Ratlam Collector Somesh Mishra told The Indian Express that the ambulance at the hospital in Sailana had not been working for months, but the contractor did not inform the doctors.

To make matters worse, the child’s parents could not procure a hearse to take her body home and had to use the motorcycle again.

Mishra said he had ordered two inquiries – one into medical negligence and the other by the additional district magistrate to look into hospital infrastructure. He said action would be taken against those responsible for the child’s death.