The death toll of infants in the last seven days has risen to 21 with five more newborn dying on Thursday in the government-run Malda Sadar Hospital here, according to acting superintendent of the hospital M.A. Rashid.
He said the cause of the death of the five new born babies, in the last 24 hours, was due to under-weight and breathing problem.
“We are trying our best to tackle the problem but we have a weak infrastructure here. However, we are trying to address all these issues,” said Mr Rashid.
Earlier, the hospital had reported death of 26 babies in a period of six days from November 11.
Reports of crib deaths have been coming from various parts of the state recently.
While 23 babies died in 10 days since December 15 in Suri Sadar Hospital, 12 children died in a day on October 28 in Burdwan Hospital.
Another eighteen infants died at B.C. Roy Memorial Hospital For Children in Kolkata.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee, also in-charge of the health department, had named a high-level task force to look into the rising infant death cases in state-run hospitals.
The taskforce had found that the Malda hospital lacks adequate number of doctors and health workers while the hygiene levels were also low.