A shocking video has been released showing a woman dying at King's County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York.

The surveillance footage shows Esmin Green in the emergency room of the hospital on June 19.

The 49-year-old had been waiting there for nearly 24 hours when she toppled from her seat and fell face down on the floor.

She was dead by the time someone on the medical staff finally came to her aid.

Details of the death were disclosed by the hospital on June 20, but the case largely remained unnoticed until the video became public.

The footage shows that Green's collapse barely caused a reaction - other patients waiting a few feet away do not go to her aid while security guards and a member of the hospital staff notice her prone body at least three times, but make no visible attempt to see if she needs help.

One guard doesn't even leave his chair, rolling it around a corner to stare at the body, then rolling away a few moments later.

Green, who had been involuntarily committed the previous morning, and had waited overnight for a bed, stopped moving about half an hour after she collapsed.

The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs the hospital, said six people have been fired as a result of the incident, including security personnel and members of the medical staff.

The psychiatric unit at Kings County Hospital had already been a subject of complaints by advocates for the mentally ill.

A state agency, the New York State Mental Hygiene Legal Service, and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit a year ago, calling the psychiatric centre "a chamber of filth, decay, indifference and danger".

Both sides in the dispute went before a federal judge on Tuesday to jointly file papers in which the hospital system agreed to a series of reforms.

Under the agreement, patients in the waiting room will now be checked every 15 minutes.

Over the next four months, the hospital will attempt to shorten the average waiting time to around ten hours.

A judge was scheduled to sign off on the agreement later. The tape of Green's wait has also been turned over to prosecutors.

Green's medical records raised the possibility that someone might have tried to cover up the circumstances of the death.

She had been brought to the hospital suffering from agitation and psychosis, city officials said.

Green was born in Jamaica, and the city has agreed to fly her body home for burial.

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