Six-month-old dies as power fails at Ahmedabad hospital

Life was snuffed out of a six-month-old child, Vipul Arvindbhai, at the Shardaben Hospital in Saraspur on Wednesday, thanks to power failure coupled with sheer negligence on the part of AMC. An electric fault causing explosion in a transformer resulted into failure of power supply in the AMC-run hospital. Vipul who was put on a ventilator in the paediatric ward died as the machine stopped working due to power failure. The baby's life could have been saved had the generators of the hospital been in working order.

But due to negligence of the AMC, out of three generator sets in the hospital, two were out of order for several months and the lone working one could be used only for lights and fans.Iqbal Sheikh, a Congress member of the Hospital Committee of the AMC, said that his party had raised the issue of non-functioning generator sets in the committee, but the administration and the ruling party had failed to understand seriousness of the matter. He said had the authorities taken the issue seriously, the life of the child could have been saved.

Surendra Baxi, leader of opposition in AMC, said that the incident proves that the Shardaben Hospital and LG Hospital are neglected by the BJP. "They (the BJP) are focusing only on VS Hospital and have failed to create basic facilities in other AMC-run hospitals," he said.

Nimesh Pandya, medical superintendent of the hospital, could not be contacted for comment. Work was going on for restoring power supply till late in the evening. Besides the child's death, 16 operations had to be cancelled in various departments.