35 kids die at India hospital over 3 days
Officials say deaths natural, but angry parents insist oxygen supply was cut off
LUCKNOW, INDIA— Parents of at least 35 children who have died in a hospital in northern India over the past three days have alleged that the fatalities were due to the lack of oxygen supply in the children’s ward.
District Magistrate Rajiv Rautela said Saturday that the deaths of the children being treated for different ailments at the Baba Raghav Das Medical College Hospital in Gorakhpur city in Uttar Pradesh state were due to natural causes. He denied that a lack of oxygen led to their deaths.
Parents said that the oxygen supply to the ward ran out Thursday night and that patients’ families were given self-inflating bags to help the children breathe.
“That’s the time when the death of the children peaked,” said Mritunjaya Singh, whose 7-month-old son was admitted to the hospital and was not among the dead.
Prashant Trivedi, the state’s top health official, acknowledged that there was a problem in the pipeline supplying oxygen.
“But the situation was managed through oxygen cylinders,” Trivedi said. “The hospital administration has enough supply of cylinders in its stock. So the report about death of children because of oxygen issue is false.”
The parents said the company that supplies oxygen to the hospital had earlier threatened to stop oxygen distribution unless the government paid its long-overdue bills.
Rautela said the hospital owed about $135,920 to the company, but added that it had adequate numbers of oxygen cylinders.
The federal health ministry sent a team of specialists to the hospital to verify what caused the fatalities at the facility.
Meanwhile, opposition leaders took to social media to blame Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, which rules the state, for its neglect and indifference to people’s health.
Opposition Congress Party vicepresident Rahul Gandhi tweeted: “Deeply pained. My thoughts are with the families of the victims. BJP govt. is responsible & should punish the negligent who caused this tragedy.”