UTTAR Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath visited the hospital in Gorakhpur where the deaths of 63 children over the last five days has sparked massive outrage. The chief minister has reached the hospital today along with Union Health Minister JP Nadda.
The Baba Raghav Das (BRD) Medical college saw over 68 people including children, infants slipping to their death in six days due to lack of oxygen supply. A four-year-old boy today succumbed to encephalitis (at the time of publishing). The state government has set up a committee to be led by the Chief Secretary to inquire into the role of oxygen suppliers in the incident.
Earlier on Saturday, as Yogi Adityanath spoke to the Prime Minister and apprised him of the situation, the Opposition demanded the expulsion of state health and medical education ministers.
Battling intense criticism, the Chief Minister, on Saturday, said that the chief of the hospital had been suspended. He also ordered a magisterial probe into the deaths, promising to “not spare anyone found guilty”; it would be a “heinous act” if the deaths were caused by a disruption in the supply of oxygen, the Chief Minister added.
Here are the latest developments in this big story:
1.Chief Minister Adityanath, who briefed Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the tragedy on Saturday, later said at a press conference that the role of the oxygen vendor will be probed. Raids were conducted at the Lucknow-based firm that had stopped supply of oxygen to the hospital because previous bills were not paid.
2.The government has said that funds for the oxygen supplier were not released by the administration of the Baba Raghav Das Medical College till August 11 even though they had been cleared on August 5.
3.Rajeev Misra, who was suspended as the chief of the medical college, has denied that he was at fault, blaming red tape for the delay. He resigned later last night, taking moral responsibility for the deaths.
4.”The state government has the full support of the central government,” Health Minister JP Nadda, who will also visit the hospital today, told NDTV, ruling out a separate investigation by the Centre.
5.Earlier on Saturday, speaking at a function in Allahabad, the Chief Minister, who has represented Gorakhpur in Parliament for nearly 20 years, said dirty surroundings and open defecation were responsible for the deaths. “Since 1978, children in eastern UP are dying due to lack of sanitation and defecating in the open,” he said.
6.While the government has admitted that the 800-bed hospital was operating without any supply of oxygen for two hours on Thursday night, it insisted that no deaths had occurred during that period.
7.Twenty-three children died at the hospital on Thursday – 14 of them in the neo-natal ward – where premature newborns are kept. While nine children died the previous day when the Chief Minister visited, nine died on Monday, 12 on Tuesday and seven on Friday, according to the hospital.
8.The deaths have sparked a political firestorm as opposition parties slammed the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government, accusing it of negligence. “Families of the dead were sent off with the bodies, they did not even do autopsies… extremely unfortunate,” former Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav said in a tweet on Friday.
9.”I am pained beyond words,” said Congress President Sonia Gandhi, while her son and deputy Rahul Gandhi tweeted, “Deeply pained. My thoughts are with the families of the victims. BJP government is responsible and should punish the negligent who caused this tragedy.”
10.On his visit earlier this week, Chief Minister Adityanath had inaugurated a 10-bed Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and a six-bed Critical Care Unit (CCU) facility at the hospital, which gets a large number of encephalitis patients. Thousands have died of encephalitis in Gorakhpur since the first case was discovered in the 1970s.
Courtesy: NDTV