Press Trust of India
Berhampur, August 30: The spurt in infant deaths at Sishu Bhavan in Cuttack has raised questions about poor infrastructure and shortage of doctors in major hospitals, including MKCG Medical College and Hospital, in the state.
MKCG Hospital, which on an average attends to 50 newborns every day, is a case in point. The Special Newborn Care Unit (SNCU) at the hospital is being run without a ventilator and an Intensive Care Unit (ICU), hospital officials said.
The hospital also does not have other necessary equipment like bubble CPAP, ABG, portable X-ray machine and Central Oxygen Supply, though it is the only referral hospital in southern Orissa, they said.
While mothers are seen lying outside the SNCU, babies are huddled into one bed to keep them warm. “We don’t have adequate beds for mothers. There are only 24 beds at the SNCU,” superintendent of the medical college AK Behera said.
“We receive numerous referral cases. We have requested the National Health Mission to increase the number of beds in the unit,” he said.
“The SNCU needs 10 pulse oximeters, four baby laryngoscopes, 10 infusion pumps, four bubble CPAP machines besides four ventilators,” said Narendra Nath Soren, professor in the paediatric department.
“Shortage of doctors and trained nurses is the other problem. The unit is being managed by the doctors of the paediatric department and house surgeons. We had put up an advertisement for a paediatric specialist, but received no application,” said Behera.
He said the government had sanctioned four ventilators for the unit. Those would be installed from the medical users’ fund.
The building that would house the 8-bed ICU had been completed. It would start functioning once the equipment were installed, he said.
At MKCG, 216 babies died between April and July this year. A total of 726 deaths were reported between April 2014 and March this year, a hospital official said.