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Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow
Eleven new born babies died for want of oxygen in Lucknow's prestigious King George's Medical College over the past two days, grief stricken parents claimed.
While five kids had died on Saturday, six breathed their last on Sunday, according to the hospital records.
Parents of ailing children still undergoing treatment in the Intensive Care Unit complained that non-availability of oxygen cylinders was a daily affair.
"I had to pull strings right up to the health minister's level to get hold of an oxygen cylinder that saved the lives of four children only the other day," said the father of a three-day old infant girl.
Another parent said, "I have seen how these kids died one after the other, while their parents were running from pillar to post to procure an oxygen cylinder."
The common complaint was while senior doctors were busy with their otherwise banned private practice in their clinics or private nursing homes, patients in the medical college were left to the mercy of junior doctors and residents.
Even as the medical college authorities were giving out contradictory versions, the victims' parents were hastily moved out of the hospital by Sunday evening.
In none of the cases, however, shortage of oxygen had been officially shown as the cause of death.
Interestingly, while admitting acute shortage of oxygen cylinders, the officiating head of the paediatrics department Dr G K Malik denied the deaths had occurred on account of absence of oxygen in the hospital.
"Death of four to five children was a routine matter in the department; in any case these children did not die of shortage of oxygen, but on account of different diseases," Malik claimed.
"It is another matter that oxygen always remains in short supply here, but that is not my area; it is for the hospital superintendent to arrange," he added.
Hospital superintendent Dr Gurmit Singh, however, pointed out, there is no dearth of cylinders; but departments have to requisition these from the central stores.
The conditions in the children's ward and its ICU, where the six children breathed their last on Sunday, however speaks volumes of gross neglect and apathy of the college authorities.
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