Table of Contents
Why in news?
- Death of around 112 infants in a Kota hospital in 35 days
- The J K Lon Hospital is the biggest such facility for children in the Kota division with hundreds of patients coming every day from adjacent districts such as Baran, Bundi and Jhalawar — even from neighbouring Madhya Pradesh.
- Primary healthcare centres (PHCs) – No special facility for newborns
- Community healthcare centres (CHCs) – newborn stabilisation units (NBSU).
- District hospitals – Special newborn care units (SNCU).
- 10 of the 100 deaths in a month happened in a span of 48 hours between December 23 and 24, prompting the Ashok Gehlot-led Congress government to form a committee.
- The committee quickly cleared the hospital of any lapses last month.
- The infant deaths recorded were mostly critical cases that were sent to the hospital from villages after the condition of the babies deteriorated.
Reasons for the deaths
- Administrative tussle between the head of dept and superintendent
- Improper maintenance of equipment (incubators)
- Shortage of oxygen lines.
- 30 per cent shortage of nursing staff.
- Anecdotal evidence has pointed to the callousness and insensitivity of the hospital staff to the concerns of the patients.
Are these deaths out of the blue?
- The state government has claimed that in the period 2014 to 2019, the death toll in 2019 at the Kota hospital has been the lowest .
- The 963 child deaths in 2019 at J K Lon government hospital are less than in the preceding years
- An average of close to 100 deaths a month
- 1,198 (2014)
- 1,260 (2015)
- 1,193 (2016)
- 1,027 (2017)
- 1,005 (2018)
- Ashok gehlot –
- ‘’Death of even one child is unfortunate but there have been 1,500-1,400 deaths in a year in the past; this time the figure is 900. There are a few deaths [every day] in every hospital in the state and in the country, nothing new. Action is being taken.”
- Jodhpur’s SN Medical College’s Department of Paediatrics reportedly recorded deaths of around 146 children in December 2019.
Infant Mortality
- The infant mortality rate is the number of deaths of children under one year of age per 1,000 live births.
- This rate is an important key indicator for a country’s health and standard of living – a low infant mortality rate indicates a high standard of healthcare
- India has the most child deaths in the world.
- In 2019, UNICEF estimated 8,50,000 babies had died in India.
- An average daily toll to 2,350
- Worst performing states – Madhya pradesh,Odisha, Assam, UP, Arunachal
Rajasthan
- 65 million births take place every year.
- The infant mortality rate is 38 per 1000 live births which implies an estimated 62,843 deaths annually, or an average 172 every day.
Reasons for high IMR
- Lack of education in the mother
- Malnutrition (more than half of Indian women are anaemic)
- Age of the mother at the time of birth
- Spacing
- Whether the child is born at home or in a facility.
- According to officials in the Health Ministry, approximately 1 million children are admitted to the 996 SNCUs in the country every year with an average death rate of 10%.
- The death rates are usually higher in medical college-based SNCUs (like J K Lon,Kota) because they tend to get sicker babies, sometimes from faraway districts when parents rush them there in a last minute effort.
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