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Written By: Admin | Updated : September 12, 2013 10:27 AM IST
Six more babies passed away at the BC Roy Children s Hospital in Kolkata between Saturday evening and Sunday morning taking the total death toll to 41 since Tuesday. Shocked parents have been pulling out their children from the hospital even as authorities claim that the deaths were unpreventable. To tackle the situation, eight more doctors have been brought to the hospital. The health department is also planning to start a fair-price medicine shop at the hospital to ensure adequate medicine supply.
In some cases, medicine procurement has been a problem. To ensure that there is no delay, we are planning a fair-price shop at the hospital. There will also be a provision to provide free medicines from the shop to poor families. That apart, we are keeping a constant watch on the situation. So far, there is no reason to panic since the deaths didn't result either from negligence or from any infection, Tridib Banerjee, chairman of the task force for infant mortality told the Times of India. He added that four to six deaths at the hospital was normal since BC Roy is a referral hospital that receives critical cases from all over the state, he added.
About 70 to 80 babies are admitted to the hospital every day, many of them from far-flung places. A doctor told TOI that many of the babies had low birth weight or suffering from kidney and liver ailments. There were also many patients who had severe pneumonia.
No poriborton in healthcare
When Mamata Banerjee had come to power riding on the promise of poriborton (change) from the decades of mismanagement of the CPM she had promised to drastically improve the healthcare scenario of the state. The TMC election manifesto had promised significant healthcare service improvements and promised to revamp primary health centres, district hospitals, sub-divisional hospital and super-speciality apex hospitals. The number of infant deaths isn t actually that much higher than previous years.
In 2011, 109 babies died at Malda Medical College and Hospital, and 48 at BC Roy but the government seems to have done nothing except creating a task-force. Unless primary healthcare and secondary healthcare units are revamped, crib deaths will continue. There s an urgent need to improve infrastructure at sub-divisional and district level hospitals so only a few big hospitals aren t burdened with the cases of sick infants. There s also a need to educate people about the importance of nourishing food and regular prenatal visits during pregnancy to bring down the neonatal mortality rate.
