The Jammu and Kashmir government on Wednesday ordered a probe following reports that as many as 358 children had died in Srinagar’s premier children’s hospital since January 2012. It admitted to 35 deaths having occurred in the last fortnight alone.
Chief minister Omar Abdullah tweeted, “The Cabinet (which met here Wednesday) has taken a serious note of the situation in G.B. Pant Hospital.” He said Sher-i-Kashmir Instit-ute of Medical Sciences director Showkat Zargar has been asked to review functioning and report back to the Cabinet in one week.
Minister for medical education Rajendra Singh Chib, who visited the hospital, admitted to 358 deaths, mainly infants, in the past five-and-a-half months and said it would be premature to blame the doctors as some of the children are reported to have died of encephalitis where the normal mortality rate is 98 per cent. He added that G.B. Pant Hospital, established with the active support of Srinagar’s Badami-bagh Cantonment Authority, is the only referral tertiary care paediatric hospital in Kashmir where patients not only from across the Valley but from parts of Jammu and Ladakh are treated. The hospital recorded nine deaths of new-borns on Tuesday, even as the hospital authorities continued to be in denial mode.