By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter
In a tragic incident at Baba Raghav Das Medical College, Gorakhpur 30 children have lost their lives due to shortage of oxygen.
The incident occured hardly two days after CM Yogi Adityanath had visited the medical college and instructed for improving the facilities. Gorakhpur is home district of CM Yogi Adityanath.
Early reports indicated that oxygen was short in supply as authorities did not clear the bills of the supply firm who in turn snapped oxygen supply.
All these deaths occured within an interval of 48 hours and were due to scarcity and disruptive supply of oxygen which started from early Thursday morning.
Most of those who died were suffering from encephalitis which is frequently reported case among children in Gorakhpur. Hospital tried to supply the oxygen by its recently installed liquid oxygen plant, but as the capacity of the plant was low itself, no substantial supply could be given.
After several attempts, doctors and children’s parent resorted to manually provide oxygen to their patients by Ambu Bags, but the efforts were insufficient and soon children started loosing their lives.
Hospital officially denied the shortage of oxygen and has said that the all deaths were due to encephalitis. But hospital sources inform that hospital administration was aware of oxygen shortage, but it never paid any attention to it.
Actually the firm Pushpa Sales supplies oxygen to the hospital. But the supplier’s bill of 67 lakh INR was not cleared. It is important to mention that as per the agreement between hospital and supplier only 10 lakhs of due amount is permitted. But as the amount reached over 60 lakhs, supplier’s officials wrote to district as well as hospital administration for payment of dues.
As Gorakhpur is witnessing cases of encephalitis, the number of deaths due to same are 114 during current year.