INDORE: At least two newborn babies died in Maharaja Tukojirao Holkar (MTH) Hospital in Madhya Pradesh's Indore in the span of 24 hours, reported PTI.
The kin of the deceased claimed that 18 newborn deaths were reported in the hospital in the span of seven days and demanded a high-level inquiry into the incidents. Meanwhile, Indore district administration and hospital authorities rubbished the allegations and said that only 2 babies died in 24 hours. Parents of one of the deceased newborns alleged that their baby died after consuming milk given by the hospital administration.
"My daughter gave birth to a baby a few days ago. A nurse administered the baby milk orally after which it died," claimed Kamal Jatav, one of the protesters, while talking to reporters.
But Dr Sunil Arya, in charge of the Special Newborn Care Unit, denied that contaminated milk was administered to any baby. The condition of the two deceased infants was already critical, he said.
Dr Sunil Arya said, "A five-day-old newborn had sepsis and it was not healing up. The infant suffered cardiac arrest due to sepsis and died. Another was a premature baby diagnosed with aspiration pneumonia. Such paediatric patient has the tendency of sudden aspiration death syndrome. So, the newborn while aspirating went into stress. We put him on a ventilator to revive, but the newborn died after some time."
He also termed the allegations of 18 deaths reported due to the negligence of the hospital management 'baseless'.
Indore ACP VS Sharma said they had begun a probe into the incident. the police have sent the bodies of the two babies for post-mortem.
(with inputs from PTI)