Centre Denies Newborn Children Deaths due to lack of Oxygen Supply or Human Negligence

To the questions on newborn children deaths in 2017, Ministry of health and family welfare denied any death of children due to lack of oxygen supply or human negligence, which is in dire contrary to numerous reports on such deaths especially those from Uttar Pradesh.

The first part of parliament budget session 2018 ends today and the next session will commence on March 5.

Kuruppasserry Varkey Thomas, Ernakulam MP from Congress party, asked a question on newborn deaths – whether newborn children have died in various parts of the country due to non-supply of oxygen in time; As an answer to this, Prakash Nadda, the minister of health and family welfare, stated “there are no such incidents reported where death of newborn children occurred due to lack of life-saving oxygen.” But he added that improving newborn survival as priority under National health mission scheme as nearly 60% of under-five child mortality is contributed by newborn mortality.

Asaduddin Owaisi, Hyderabad MP from MIM party, on children deaths, asked to state whether large number of children deaths have been reported from different hospitals due to human negligence across the country especially from Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand. For this question, the minister of health and family welfare admitted that there are reports of newborn deaths during July – August, 2017, but said that the central government teams which enquired into the matter did not “indicate any human negligence.”

On the contrary to the answers given by central government, there are numerous media reports which indicate that in 2017, not less than 1300 newborn children have died in BRD medical college hospital in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh alone. And from the same hospital, nearly 290 children died in August, last year.

The answers stated by the central government in Lok Sabha are in general, contradictory for a range of reasons. For example, the principal of the BRD medical college, Rajiv Mishra was suspended in August 2017 by the Uttar Pradesh government for his “irresponsible act” of allegedly delaying payment to the oxygen cylinder suppliers. Doesn’t this count as ‘human negligence’? Also, reportedly, the Gorakhpur SP had admitted that 21 children died due to shortage of oxygen supply.

In Jamshedpur’s Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Medical College hospital in Jharkhand, it has been reported that 52 infants died over 30 days in August, 2017.

While the official total number of estimated infant deaths is recorded as 8.4 lakhs in 2016 alone, which signifies the profound problem in child health care, in particular, central government denying the ‘human negligence’ in Parliament is a serious matter of concern.