Cries of anguish

A spate of infant deaths in Shahdol district hospital has put the state government in the dock

- SRAVANI SARKAR

REKHA JAISWAL’S VOICE trembles as she describes how her infant daughter died. A resident of Pongri village in Madhya Pradesh’s Shahdol district, Rekha was nearly eight months pregnant when she was induced. “The sonography report suggested that something was amiss with my child,” she said. “But even though Ritika weighed just 1.4kg at birth, she was otherwise normal. As she was born premature, Ritika remained in the hospital for 13 days. Her health was improving when we took her home. Then, all of a sudden, she stopped drinking milk and was gone within two days.”

Ritika was just 40 days old when she died at the Shahdol district hospital on December 3. The authorities reported the cause of death as pneumonia, sepsis, and hypothermia, but Rekha says the baby had no serious symptoms. The 25-year-old is inconsolable. Ritika was her fourth child, and the second one to dies. Her four-year-old son had drowned last year.

Two days before Ritika died, Rajesh and Guddi Bai Baiga of Semriha village lost their infant son in the same hospital. Anuraj was just three months old when he died of pneumonia at the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). “My son did not seem to have any serious health problem, though he was constantly crying and heaving when we took him to the hospital on November 27. But his condition deteriorated quickly,” said Rajesh.