West Bengal: 9 babies die within 24 hours in a hospital

Tragedy befell in West Bengal’s Murshidabad Medical College as 9 babies died within a span of 24 hours. Three of them were newborns delivered in the hospital and the others were brought in for medical care from other centres. “Nine children have died in the last 24 hours. We have formed an inquiry committee. Based on a preliminary enquiry, most of the children were found to be malnutritioned and weighed 300-500 grams in weight. One among them had a severe heart problem from birth. We do not have such a facility to treat him here and we did not have the time to take him to the facility to get him treated,” said Professor Amit Dan, Principal of the Murshidabad Medical College Hospital.

There was widespread outrage at this incident. The hospital also had issues pertaining to an overload of cases. A medical board has been constituted to investigate this incident. “Another problem is that inPWDwork is going on at Jangipur hospital and all patients there are being referred to us. We have 129 beds and 300 patients. We are trying our best but we are not able to save all children, most of whom suffer from malnutrition and are underweight,”Professor Dan added.