60 Children Dead in An Indian Hospital as Oxygen Supply Gets Cut Off

A man carried the body of his 1-month-old nephew at Baba Raghav Das Medical College Hospital in Gorakhpur, India, in August.

After the oxygen ran out at an Indian hospital last month and at least 60 children died, who should take the blame?


That question continues to vex the authorities here, and over the weekend, police officials in northern India arrested another suspect: the owner of the company that cut off the hospital’s oxygen supplies because of unpaid bills.

The deaths, during a week in August when oxygen supplies were dwindling and then ran out at Baba Raghav Das Medical College Hospital, a government hospital in Gorakhpur, in Uttar Pradesh State, have stirred outrage in India.

For days, pictures of sick children lingered at the top of India’s major newspapers, and the hospital became a sad symbol of health care in the country. The enormous, overtaxed system has so many people moving through it that mistakes are often not corrected until many lives are lost. And corruption takes its own toll, with money for critical health needs routinely stolen.

Nine people have been arrested, including the head of the medical college in Gorakhpur, his wife, several doctors, a pharmacist and clerks.

Manish Bhandari, the oxygen supplier, was the final suspect, according to police officials.

The authorities said that Mr. Bhandari knew the police were looking for him and that he had been hiding in Chennai, a city in southern India, more than a thousand miles away.

“He was under pressure to surrender,” said Abhishek Singh, the deputy superintendent of police in Gorakhpur. “Now all the nine accused are in the judicial custody, and they will face trial after the police frame charges against them.”

The suspects are being held in connection with culpable homicide, cheating, criminal conspiracy and corruption.

Officials with the oxygen supply company, Pushpa Sales, have said that the hospital’s oxygen problem was not their fault and that they had repeatedly warned that they could not continue making deliveries unless the hospital settled its bill.

As the oxygen ran out, nurses gave hand pumps to the parents of the sick children to keep them alive. At the time, dozens of children were in critical condition, and doctors at the hospital have said that several died because of the oxygen shortage. Some parents have accused doctors and administrators at the hospital of stealing public money, saying that this was what caused the bills to go unpaid.

The hospital is in a part of India that is heavily hit by deadly mosquito-borne diseases like Japanese encephalitis at this time of year. Nearly 400 children died at the Gorakhpur hospital last month, about the same number as in August 2016.

Dr. P. K. Singh, the principal of the Gorakhpur medical college, said the situation had improved in the past few weeks. “Encephalitis deaths have come down to less than five per day,” he said.

The hospital has also begun to restrict family members from camping out in the hospital corridors. At the time of the deaths, hundreds of families were packed in the corridors, making it more difficult for doctors to do their work.

Source: NYtimes