A day after it reported nine deaths of newborns in 24 hours, the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital on Sunday saw three more deaths in its neonatal care unit.
A day after it reported nine deaths of newborns in 24 hours, the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital on Sunday saw three more deaths in its neonatal care unit.
The state government, following the preliminary inquiry, gave a clean chit to the hospital. It stated that against the average deaths of four infants in a day, nine are “only slightly higher than the average.”
The three-member committee headed by Dr RL Dixit, deputy director, medical education, which looked into the incident, said the babies were premature and suffered from a host of complications including poorly developed lungs.
“This hospital gets the highest number of referral cases from other places and many of the babies who come to the neonatal unit are extremely underweight and ill. However, we will see if there has been any negligence on the part of the hospital,” Dr Dixit said while talking to reporters outside the neonatal unit.
The other two members of the committee are Dr Himanshu Joshi, Pediatric HOD of Gandhinagar Medical College, and Dr Nilesh Shah, professor of gynaecology and dean of Vadnagar Medical College.
Earlier, addressing a press conference, state health commissioner Jayanti Ravi clarified that none of the infants died because of medical negligence or system failure.
“Of the nine babies, only three deaths happened on Saturday. On average, the Civil Hospital records three to five infant deaths a day,” said Ravi.
Chief Minister Vijay Rupani visited the hospital on Sunday, but refused to comment, saying it was premature to do so.
“We have formed a probe committee, so it will not be right to comment before it submits the report. However, we have directed that all the nine deaths be investigated, so that we know if any of them was a result of negligence by the hospital,” said Rupani.
Meanwhile, the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party members shouted slogans outside the hospital. Congress workers also created ruckus inside the medical superintendent’s office and broke some photo-frames.
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