LUCKNOW: The trail of deaths which had left the entire nation stunned early this month at Baba Raghav Das Medical College in Gorakhpur is continuing unabated as 63 children have lost life in the last three days between August 27 and 29 at the state-run hospital. While 13 children are said to have died due to Acute Encephalitis Syndrom (AES), number of other reasons were cited for rest of the deaths.
Confirming the deaths, officiating principal of BRD Medical College PK Singh said that while 17 children lost their life on August 27, 25 on August 28 and 21 on August 29, together taking the figure to 63 in three days. Of these casualties, 27 children died in neo-natal ICU while the remaining 36 in pediatric ICU.
In all, total 386 children have died in the month of August so far. The data provided by Dr Singh also reflects that total 1,250 children have died in BRD Medical College since January this year with August registering the highest 386 casualties of which 290 were neo-natal, 77 were claimed by AES and rest 96 lost the battle of life to other medical conditions.
The figure of 386 is up by 22 notches as compared to the previous year when 364 casualties were reported in the month of August. Of those 364, 174 were new born while 190 were from other paediatric wards. Per day casualty figure in August the previous years were— 19 (2014), 22 (2015), 19.5 (2016) and 13 (till August 30 in 2017). But the figures of 17 or 25 on a single day are drawing the media glare.
The paediatricians , however, attribute the deaths to the primary health centres which are in shambles in the state. A glance at the over all casualty figures of previous years will flag 567 deaths in August 2014, 668 in 2015 and 587 in 2016 whereas in 2017 , this figure so far has been 386 so far as per the hospital records.
Even increased footfall with 6,000 patients turning up in the monsoon months sometimes makes the system run out of resources resulting in high casualty figure.