There was no let up in infant deaths in Kolkata’s premier BC Roy State referral hospital with 10 more deaths being reported in the past 24 hours taking the toll to 52 in the past one week, hospital sources said adding however most infants perished because they were brought in such a condition to the hospital.
Notwithstanding complaints of negligence on the part of the hospital staff, Dr Tridib Banerjee, the chairman of the Special Task Force created a couple of years ago by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to oversee childcare facilities in the State said quoting the senior hospital staff that the deaths had occurred on account of the critical nature of the cases and not because there was negligence on the hospital’s part.
“I have collected the necessary information and found that there was not a single case of any negligence,” Banerjee said.
However, the victims’ relatives had different stories to tell. “My child was kept unfed for 48 hours. It was only after we resented the insiders said that we will have to buy such facilities from the patients. But by the time we managed the cash my child had perished,” said a wailing father.
Another person, a mother of a dead patient reported how she was literally “chased away by the nurses when she told them how her child was bleeding from the spots where they had inserted the drips. later they informed her that the child was no more.”
However, a senior doctor in the hospital said most of the deaths were caused because “they were brought in an extremely critical condition.”
Meanwhile, there were reports that the Health Department had directed the district hospitals to put a check on referring cases as frequently as they do on normal occasions.
After 18 children died 48 hours in October 2011 the Chief Minister had acted fast taking a host of steps to prevent such deaths. Consequently a number of sick neo-natal care units were set up in various hospitals including the Calcutta Medical College.
Under the same programme the numbers of beds were increased from 170 to 400 in the BC Roy Hospital. Though Chief Minister announced setting up of a host of multi-speciality and super-speciality hospitals, there was little progress in that direction on account of paucity of funds.
Similarly though the Government hastily upgraded ordinary paediatric units into SNCUs as in the case of the Calcutta Medical College things failed to produce desired results as there was shortage of trained staff.
For instance, the CNMC has in reality 60 beds though officially it should have 100 beds in the SNCU unit. Moreover there are only four nurses and one specialist RMO to handle the 60 patients, insiders said adding the condition was no better at the BC Roy Hospital which had been in the news for all the wrong reasons since the time of the left Front Government.