Malda: At least 20 infants have died at a government hospital in West Bengal’s Malda district in the past 72 hours, with 10 deaths reported in the last 24 hours.
Parents have alleged that negligence on the part of doctors and hospital staff at the Malda Medical College and Hospital led to the deaths of some of the infants. They claimed few doctors were at hand and several medical instruments were not functional at the hospital when the infants, most of them newborn, were admitted to the hospital.
The hospital administration has denied the allegation, saying that all the infants were born in villages near Malda and were brought to the hospital only when they were in a critical condition. “We are getting reports that the children are malnourished,” Abdur Rashid, Medical Superintendent of the hospital, said.
This is not the first instance of infant deaths at the hospital. In May this year, 16 infants had died here and a team of experts had concluded that the deaths were due to malnutrition and low weight.
Several cases of infant deaths have been reported from across the state. Last month, around 65 crib deaths were reported at the B C Roy hospital in Kolkata. The Mamata Banerjee government, had denied any kind of negligence at the state-run hospital as the cause of deaths.
