At least eight newborns have died since Wednesday evening in the newly-established Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed Medical College in Assam, according to unidentified officials in the state’s health department. The state government has sent the director of medical education and a Unicef consultant to inquire into the deaths, according to The Indian Express.
The authorities have denied any negligence on the part of hospital staff, and blamed the deaths on factors such as low weight at the time of birth, Hindustan Times reported. “In many cases, there’s very little antenatal care during pregnancies,” Dr Dilip Kumar Dutta of Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed Medical College told the daily. “This leads to very low birth weights of newborns. Of the deaths, most weighed below 2.5 kilos at birth, and one newborn was less than a kilo.”
The babies were kept in the neonatal intensive care unit of the hospital. The facility is located in Barpeta, about 140 km from Guwahati.
A child health consultant of National Rural Health Mission in Assam told Scroll.in that Barpeta has a long history of high infant mortality rate. A paediatrician said the hospital was used to seeing deaths of around 50 newborns a month on an average. “This is primarily because of the socio-economic background of the people the hospital caters to,” the paediatrician, who did not want to be named, told Scroll.in.
However, he added, that the last few months have been better. “So eight deaths in 24 hours does seem a little suspect,” he said, adding that only a post-mortem would reveal if there was any other infection that contributed to the deaths.
Assam Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, however, has ruled out any wrongdoing. “It is solely the critical nature of the cases like age of mother, weight of baby etc, that led to the deaths. Two mothers are below 20 years of age,” he was quoted as saying. “The doctors have specifically told me that these babies could not be saved in spite of their best possible care and effort.”
This comes just two months after at least 63 children had died at Baba Raghav Das Medical College and Hospital in Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath’s constituency of Gorakhpur. The incident took place between August 7 and August 11.
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