Infants continue to die in Bengal hospitals

While Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is busy in the green pastures of the Sunderbans, the procession of infant deaths continues to haunt district hospitals with the figures reaching a staggering 150 in the last one month without minimum steps being taken by the government to arrest the neo-natal fatality. 

Though the chief minister continues to say that the reports of child deaths in different hospitals in the state are cooked up stories by the media and most babies who died were underweight and suffered from malnutrition, the fact remains that in the last 48 hours 19 babies died in government hospitals at Bankura and Malda taking the cumulative figure to more than 150 in the last two months.

More than 125 babies have died since January 16 at Malda alone.  “In the last 48 hours, of the nine infants who died, seven were 15 days old,” Vice-Principal of the Malda Medical College and Hospital Dr MA Rashid said.

When asked about the reason of their death, Rashid said most of the newborns came from rural hospitals in Malda district and outside with problems ranging from pneumonia to septicaemia.

With a capacity of just 50 beds in the paediatric ward of the Malda hospital, the authorities have to ramp three or more infants in a single bed exposing them cross-infection.

“Children are vulnerable to diseases but as we have no other alternative we put them with other children, leaving them at the mercy of god. As they get exposed to other serious diseases, this enhances their mortality rate” said a senior doctor of the hospital.
Ten babies that died in the last 48 hours, four of them on Wednesday and six on Thursday,” Superintendent of Bankura Sammilani Medical College and Hospital Dr P Kundu said.

According to Kundu, the deaths were due to meningitis, pneumonia and low birth weight.
Despite the deplorable condition of the district hospitals and health centres and the alarming rise of infant deaths in the state, an unfazed Mamata Banerjee continues to overlook the pathetic health situation of the state terming it a “drama” or “rumour” created by the media.

Observing that 50,000 babies die each year in the state because they are born at home, Banerjee had said recently: “It is not due to hospital treatment that they are dying. They don’t come to hospital. When they come, they are gasping. There is no scope of treating them.

“We are trying to improve the rural health system of the state. After assuming power, we have already sanctioned Rs 1,200 crore for upgrading rural health system of the state,” Banerjee who also holds the health portfolio, had recently said in an interview.

Toeing Banerjee’s line, MoS for Health Chandrima Bhattacharya dubbed the recent hue and cry over infant deaths a “drama” and said, “There has been a 3 per cent drop in the child mortality rate in the last eight months in the state when the new government took over.”