Click to play videoThiruvananthapuram: The Kerala government is under fire after the deaths of at least 40 infants in a state-run hospital in the last one month.
The Sree Avittam Thirunal (SAT) Hospital is no place for babies to be—there is one nurse for every 20 babies; the infants are cleaned once a day; the labour ward is overcrowded and disposable equipment is in short supply.
The ward is so overcrowded that parents have to put their babies on the floor. “It has been 15 days since we came here but we don’t even have a proper place to keep the baby. My baby and I have to lie on the floor. There is no cleanliness and nobody cares,” says Omana, a mother at the hospital.
Tests have confirmed that the babies died after contracting a bacterial infection at the hospital. Health workers blame doctors for the unhygienic condition.
“I put the blame squarely on the medical professionals, the doctors who have been running the hospital for the past 40 years. They have turned the place into a charity hospital where standards and cleanliness are not the priority,” says health activist C R Soman.
P K Sreemathi, Minister for Health and Family Welfare, has woken up and says the hospital will be improved immediately. “We have immediately allotted Rs 1 crore to upgrade all facilities at the hospital. We are going to have a huge cleansing drive started soon,” says Sreemathi.
The minister may have woken late though. A court in Thiruvananthapuram on Thursday charged Sreemathi and seven others for culpable homicide not amounting to murder over the death of the babies.
The scandal doesn’t stop at the Sree Avittam Thirunal Hospital. The State Pollution Control Board has issued show-cause notices to eight major private hospitals in Kochi for improper medical waste management.
BABY DOOM HOSPITAL |
 IANS reports that the babies may have died because of infection caused by klebsiella bacteria that live in unhygienic conditions. |
| Hospital's superintendent has been removed for not informing the government about deaths. |
| SAT is attached to the Medical College Hospital, where teachers' association blames the government for the poor infrastructure. |
| Association says SAT staff overstretched, can’t handle around 60 births daily. |
| Government has appointed a five-member panel of senior doctors to submit a report in three weeks. |
| A normal delivery at the hospital costs around Rs.3,000 and in private hospitals over Rs 12,000. |
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