CALLS FOR MODI ALLY TO QUIT AFTER 64 CHILDREN DIE AT INDIA HOSPITAL
Pressure on firebrand Hindu priest who became chief minister of India’s largest state earlier this year
Calls were yesterday growing for a key ally of Indian prime minister Narendra Modi to resign after dozens of children died at a government hospital that ran short of oxygen canisters.
Yogi Adityanath, chief minister of Uttar Pradesh state where the deaths occurred, visited the hospital yesterday as angry relatives rushed to the scene demanding answers.
At least 64 children died over six days at the hospital in Gorakhpur, with reports that 30 deaths on Thursday and Friday were from a lack of oxygen in children’s wards after the hospital failed to pay the supplier.
Panicked families were using 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 said the deaths were caused by encephalitis and other illnesses.
Adityanath, a firebrand Hindu priest from Modi’s conservative nationalist party, vowed to leave no stone unturned as he toured the hospital in his saffron robes.
“If the investigation finds any authority guilty of negligence, he will not be spared at any cost,” Mr Adityanath said 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 a population of 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,” said Ram Prasad, sitting by his two-year-old daughter’s bed.
“The doctors and other staff here were very worried. They rushed to my kid too and gave us a manual pumping machine. It was the longest one and a half to two hours of our lives.
“We spent the night pressing that machine so that nothing happened to our daughter.”
Others described the hospital in total chaos, with helpless parents carrying the lifeless bodies of their children, crying out for help.
“It was very sudden. We didn’t know what was happening,” Bechna Devi said, while sitting beside her three-and-a-half year old daughter Saroj. “Every hospital staffer around us was in a rush and they simply told us to use that pump machine for our child.”
Gorakhpur’s police commissioner Anil Kumar said yesterday that 11 more children had died at the hospital on Saturday.
“But I reiterate, they were not due to lack of oxygen supply,” Mr Kumar said. As anger grew, opposition parties and government critics led the charge for Adityanath’s resignation.
“The death of innocent children in Gorakhpur is a tragedy of epic proportions,” said Sanjay Jha, a spokesman for India’s main opposition Congress party.
“The fact that it happened in a state-run hospital is a manifestation of pathetic governance.
“The buck stops with CM Adityanath, as his government has clearly misplaced priorities. He should resign forthwith owning full moral responsibility.”
The hospital’s day-by-day breakdown of the death toll showed a jump on Thursday when 23 infants died, including 14 babies at its neonatal unit.
Doctors admitted that the oxygen supply had been disrupted for a couple of hours late on Thursday, but they also said no deaths had occurred at that time.
The head of the hospital was stood down pending an inquiry into the oxygen shortage, which allegedly stemmed from US$100,000 (Dh367,000) in overdue bills, some dating back to November.
“If there is any pending payment which is yet to be made to any gas supplier, then it should be done immediately,” senior state health official Anita Bhatnagar Jain said.
“There should be no shortage of oxygen and adequate stock of oxygen must be maintained.”
Mr Adityanath, who won Uttar Pradesh in a landslide in March for Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, has ordered a review of oxygen supplies in the state’s hospitals and medical colleges.
The head of the hospital was stood down pending an inquiry into the oxygen shortage