Serious Only Ah-Pu-Neh-land Hospital killed 64 children by the shortage of OXYGEN SUP

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http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/sou...without-oxygen


64 children dead in India hospital due to oxygen shortage
VIDEO: REUTERS
Published
7 hours ago
Updated
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LUCKNOW, India (AFP) – At least 64 children have died over six days at a government hospital in northern India that suffered oxygen shortages, officials said on Saturday (Aug 12).

Authorities have launched an inquiry into the causes of the oxygen disruption but denied reports that it had caused the deaths at the Baba Raghav Das Hospital in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh state.

Indian media said 30 children died on Thursday and Friday because of the lack of oxygen on wards. Suppliers’ bills had allegedly not been paid.

“Sixty patients have died at the hospital in the last five days but we don’t think it’s linked to reports of oxygen shortage,” Anil Kumar, Gorakhpur’s divisional commissioner told AFP.
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State health minister Sidharth Nath Singh announced later that four more deaths had been reported on Saturday, taking the toll to 64 over the six days starting Monday.

Singh denied that any of the deaths were linked to the oxygen shortage.

Twenty-three children died on Thursday, when, according to a statement shared by the office of state chief minister, “the pressure of the liquid oxygen supply became low and 52 reserve oxygen cylinders were pressed into service”.

The office of Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Twitter that Modi was “monitoring the situation in Gorakhpur” and was in touch with state authorities. Modi’s conservative nationalist party controls the state.
‘ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE’

The Hindustan Times newspaper on Saturday described chaotic scenes at the hospital as oxygen supply was disrupted.

“Even as 90 jumbo oxygen cylinders were pressed into service to maintain the supply on Friday, the hospital ran out of oxygen around 1am,” it said.

“All hell broke loose,” the report added.

“What followed was complete chaos as panic-stricken relatives of patients ran for help, and with the support of hospital staff tried to maintain supply of oxygen... using artificial manual breathing bags (AMBB).

“However, several patients started collapsing due to inadequate supply,” it added.

One uncle of an 11-year-old girl, Vandana, who died at the hospital, echoed local media reports about the chaos.

“We didn’t know what was happening at the time. The staff just told us to keep pressing AMBB after every count till three. We kept doing that for some time,” he told ABP news channel.

The region is one of India’s poorest and registers hundreds of child deaths each year from Japanese Encephalitis and Acute Encephalitis Syndrome, which is rife in parts of eastern and northern India.

“We will be getting more liquid oxygen cylinders tonight or tomorrow, and have also cleared the dues of the supplier,” district official Kumar told AFP.

He added that the deaths could be due to “natural” causes, as many patients admitted are in “serious” condition.

India’s Nobel Peace laureate Kailash Satyarthi, a campaigner for children’s rights, described the deaths as “a massacre” on Twitter.

“Thirty kids died in hospital without oxygen. This is not a tragedy. It’s a massacre. Is this what 70 years of freedom means for our children?” he said.

The state’s health minister suspended the hospital’s top official, holding him accountable for the oxygen supply until the completion of a formal investigation.

“The reasons for the disruption of oxygen supply are being investigated but our probe has revealed that no deaths happened because of it,” Singh told reporters after a visit to the hospital.

“When you hear about around 23 deaths in a day, it shocks you, and it should,” he said.

“But the average daily death toll for the month of August (at the hospital) has been 19 to 22 for the last three years,” the minister added.




http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017...ygen-supplies/



Sixty children die in Indian hospital amid row over oxygen supplies

Children are treated at Baba Raghav Das Medical College Hospital in Gorakhpur, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh Credit: AP

Reuters

12 August 2017 • 4:20pm

Sixty children have died at a hospital in India's northern state of Uttar Pradesh this week, prompting local media to blame the fatalities on a lack of oxygen supplies.

The BRD Medical College specified that 34 were babies who died at the neo-natal intensive care unit, while 12 died because of encephalitis. The rest died of other unspecified causes.

Local media reports have said some of the deaths were caused due to an oxygen shortage after a private supplier withdrew its equipment over unpaid hospital dues.

BRD Medical Chief Medical Superintendent Dr R.S. Shukla denied the deaths had been caused by a lack of oxygen supplies when asked by Reuters.

The hospital, in a statement, said there had been a "drop in pressure in the supply of liquid oxygen" on Thursday, but added cylinders were procured from various other suppliers. It did not specify whether that had resulted in any deaths.

The breakdown of the death toll provided by the hospital showed a spike on Thursday, with 23 fatalities, including 14 babies at its neo-natal unit.
Family members care for children undergoing treatment at the Baba Raghav Das Hospital
Family members care for children undergoing treatment at the Baba Raghav Das Hospital Credit: EPA

The Uttar Pradesh and federal governments are investigating the matter, officials said. A tweet from the Prime Minister's office said Narendra Modi was constantly monitoring the situation.

The deaths have sparked a political firestorm as opposition politicians sought to pin the blame on Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, which rules the state.

The hospital is located in Gorakhpur district, which is represented by Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who was appointed to head the state this year.

"The current government is responsible for the deaths of children in Gorakhpur due to the lack of oxygen. Strict action should be taken," tweeted former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav.

State government officials in TV appearances chastised opposition leaders for seeking to politicize the issue.

Outbreaks of encephalitis are common every year in India, claiming hundreds of lives, especially during the monsoon season. The disease is most often caused by contaminated food or water, mosquito bites, or through breathing in respiratory droplets from an infected person.

India spends about one percent of its GDP on public health, among the lowest in the world. Successive governments have faced criticism for not reforming the overburdened public health system which is still plagued with shortage of doctors and dilapidated infrastructure.

Modi's government has in recent years increased health spending and vowed to make healthcare more affordable.
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http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/0...053852923.html



Outcry over deaths of children in Gorakhpur hospital
Inquiry launched after 60 deaths in Uttar Pradesh hospital over five days amid reports lack of oxygen was to blame.

Officials say all 60 deaths occurred at the Baba Raghav Das Hospital's paediatric ward [AFP]

At least 60 children have died over five days at a hospital in eastern India, with local news media reporting that the deaths occurred when a company supplying oxygen cut off supply after a payment dispute.

Authorities said on Saturday they have launched an inquiry but denied reports that a lack of oxygen had caused the deaths at the state-run Baba Raghav Das (BRD) Hospital in Gorakhpur.

"We have launched an inquiry and a preliminary report should be out today," Anil Kumar, Gorakhpur's divisional commissioner, told AFP news agency.
India: At least 30 children die in hospital

"Yes, sixty patients have died at the hospital in the last five days but we don't think it's linked to reports of oxygen shortage."

The hospital, which is in Uttar Pradesh state, ran out of oxygen at 1am local time on Friday, forcing medics to use manual ventilators on patients, the Hindustan Times reported.

The newspaper said doctors made frantic calls to the supplier, Pushpa Sales, in order to restore the oxygen supply as the children started dying.

Limited supplies resumed but were quickly depleted.

A statement by the office of Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, said that all 60 deaths occurred at the hospital's paediatric ward over a five-day period starting on Monday.

Twenty-three children died on Thursday, when, according to the statement, "the pressure of the liquid oxygen supply became low and 52 reserve oxygen cylinders were pressed into service".

BRD Hospital had run up debts of $6.9m Indian rupees ($107,000), a sales representative at the company responsible for supplying the oxygen said.
Problem in pipeline

Prashant Trivedi, Uttar Pradesh's top health official, admitted there was a problem in the pipeline supplying oxygen.

"But the situation was managed through oxygen cylinders. The hospital administration has enough supply of cylinders in its stock. So the report about death of children because of oxygen issue is false," Trivedi said.

Parents, however, said oxygen supply ran out on Thursday night and patients' families were given self-inflating bags to help the children breathe.

"That's the time when the death of the children peaked," said Mritunjaya Singh, whose seven-month-old son was admitted to the hospital and was not among the dead.
The tragedy has put the administration of Adityanath under critical scrutiny [J Prakash/Reuters]

Parmatma Gautam, whose one-month-old nephew, Roshan, died when the oxygen supply stopped, said the hospital authorities and the district administration were trying to cover up their failure to pay the bills on time.

"We saw our baby struggling to breathe and we couldn't do anything," Gautam told the Associated Press news agency.

The office of the Indian prime minister said via Twitter that Narendra Modi was "monitoring the situation in Gorakhpur" and was in touch with the state authorities.

The deaths and alleged circumstances surrounding the events in Gorakhpur have led to an outpouring of grief and anger on Indian social media.

READ MORE: The challenges of treating drug-resistant TB in India

On his Twitter account, cricketer Indian Mohammad Kaif wrote: "Tragic to hear loss of lives of innocent children in Gorakhpur. This is unacceptable. Incompetence [is] the main reason for such tragedies."

Another Twitter user named Nupur wrote: "No excuse for what's happened in Gorakhpur. Heads must roll. Responsibility assigned. Arrests done. INEXCUSABLE."

Sanjay Kapoor, editor of Hard News, an Indian political and current affairs magazine, put the blame of the "massacre" on India's worsening health system.

"This is a story that has been unfolding repeatedly in different parts of the country," he told Al Jazeera from New Delhi. "Public health is a major casualty of corruption."


Source: Al Jazeera and news agencies










http://thebricspost.com/oxygen-runs-...children-dead/


Oxygen runs out at Indian hospital, over 60 children dead
August 12, 2017, 8:48 am

Atleast 60 children, newborn babies among them, have died over the past 5 days in a hospital in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh in what appears to be a case of medical negligence.

The dead ranged from babies to 12-year-olds.

It’s a massacre not a tragedy, Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi said on Friday reacting to the incident.

30 kids died in hospital without oxygen. This is not a tragedy. It's a massacre. Is this what 70 years of freedom means for our children?

— Kailash Satyarthi (@k_satyarthi) August 11, 2017

About 200 kms east of state capital Lucknow, in the town of Gorakhpur, the state-run Baba Raghav Das Medical College reported a shortage of oxygen supply on Thursday.

Local media reports said on Thursday that the deaths were owing to this oxygen shortage which occurred after a private supplier stopped its supply over unpaid hospital dues.

According to hospital records, 7 children died on Friday, 23 died on Thursday, 9 on Wednesday, and 12 on Tuesday, 9 on Monday.

Local officials have denied that the deaths are linked to a lack of oxygen supply.

Chief Medical Superintendent Dr R.S. Shukla said on Friday at least 10 of the children at BRD Medical College, the largest in Gorakhpur, had died because of encephalitis. The rest had died from “delivery-related issues”, he added.

Gorakhpur District Magistrate Rajeev Rautela said on Friday: “No death in BRD Medical College, Gorakhpur, has taken place due to shortage of oxygen supply. Only seven deaths have taken place at the BRD Medical College today and these were due to different medical reasons.”

The ruling Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) is also governing the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

The Chief Minister of the state, Yogi Adityanath, a saffron-robed Hindu priest, is the elected Member of Parliament from Gorakhpur. On Saturday, Adityanath ordered a high-level probe into the incident.

Adityanath represented the ruling BJP during the Uttar Pradesh state polls earlier this year, and helped Prime Minister Narendra Modi consolidate power as he bids for re-election in a national ballot in 2019.

Opposition Congress Party state chief Raj Babbar said that the horrific incident shows the “insensitivity of the state government”.

“The government is responsible for the deaths of these children,” he said.

On Friday, the private firm Pushpa Gas Agency, said they had repeatedly written to the authorities about pending hospital dues.

“We repeatedly communicated about pending payments to concerned authorities but never got response,” Meenu Walia, official at Pushpa Gas Agency told Indian news agency ANI.


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