30 kids die for lack of oxygen at UP hospital

Lucknow: Thirty children have died in Gorakhpur in the past 36 hours due to lack of oxygen in the Baba Raghav Das (BRD) Medical College. District magistrate Rajeev Rautela admitted to the deaths, but said most were due to encephalitis. “It’s normal for 10 deaths to take place in encephalitis and neo-natal wards,” he said.

Sources said 23 children died on Thursday and seven more on Friday. The state government later issued a statement claiming no deaths had taken place due to the shortage of oxygen. The government spokesman blamed the media, particularly television channels, for spreading misinformation.

The spokesman claimed that only seven deaths had taken place due to medical reasons.

Doctors at BRD Medical College said the company that supplied liquid oxygen to the hospital — Pushpa Sales — had stopped the supply after its pending bills amounting to Rs 66 lakhs were not cleared. The oxygen supply went dry on Thursday night.

The liquid oxygen plant at BRD Medical College had been installed two years ago and piped oxygen supply was given to 300 patients at a time. After the plant went dry, doctors used ambu-bags but oxygen through this could not be given beyond two hours on Friday.

The company had sent repeated reminders to the authorities at the government hospital and medical college, considered among the state’s biggest. They said the technician at the hospital had also  informed the authorities of dipping oxygen levels, but no heed was paid.

Some of the children who died have been identified as Junaid, Abdul Rehman, Lavkush, Jyoti, Shalu, Khushboo, Fruity, Shivani and Aarushi.All of them were admitted to the encephalitis ward.

The district magistrate said he was informed of the disruption in oxygen supply on Friday, but the hospital authorities said they had made alternative arrangements.

UP minister for medical education Ashutosh Tandon did not even have any information about the deaths. Gorakhpur is the constituency of UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath and the BRD Medical University is the biggest medical facility in Purvanchal.

The chief minister was in Gorakhpur and adjoining districts on Wednesday and Thursday, where he held review meetings and admonished local officials for laxity. He also visited the BRD Hospital Wednesday to check on the facilities for treatment of encephalitis, which has become a regular epidemic in eastern UP.

Congress MP Pramod Tiwari said the incident should be treated as murder of 30 children and that the guilty should be punished accordingly. Samajwadi Party spokesman Rajendra Chaudhary, on the other hand, demanded the resignation of chief minister Yogi Adityanath for “criminal neglect” that had caused the deaths.