Outrage mounts over India hospital infant deaths

GORAKHPUR — A key ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was facing calls yesterday for his resignation after dozens of children died at a government hospital in northern India that suffered oxygen shortages.

Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh state where the deaths occurred, visited the hospital on Sunday as angry relatives rushed to the scene demanding answers.

At least 64 children died over six days at the hospital in Gorakhpur, with Indian media reporting that 30 deaths Thursday and Friday were from a lack of oxygen in the children’s wards.

Suppliers’ bills had allegedly not been paid, leading to a shortage that saw panicked families using artificial manual breathing bags to help their stricken loved ones.

Local officials have conceded there was a disruption to the oxygen supply at the hospital, but insist the deaths were caused by encephalitis and other illnesses, not a lack of available oxygen.

Adityanath, a firebrand Hindu priest from Modi’s conservative nationalist party, vowed to leave no stone unturned as he toured the hospital in his signature saffron robes.

“If the investigation finds any authority guilty of negligence, he will not be spared at any cost,” Adityanath told reporters in Gorakhpur, the city he represented for nearly two decades.

He repeated that the deaths were caused by encephalitis - a mosquito-borne virus that every year ravages poorer, eastern parts of Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state with more than 200 million people.

But parents have recounted panic and horror as their children suddenly began gasping for air amid an apparent drop in oxygen, and nurses handed out manual pumps to aid their breathing.

“I am a poor man who doesn’t understand what happens here, but it was clear that day the oxygen wasn’t going up. The doctors and other staff here were very worried,” Ram Prasad, sitting by