Kolkata, November 4
As many as 15 babies died during the past 24 hours at Kolkata’s Dr B.C. Roy Child’s Hospital allegedly due to septicaemia and other infectious diseases, which caused panic in the city.
As the news spread in the morning, a large number of people including women and children staged a demonstration in front of the hospital and alleged that the babies’ death had been caused because of wrong treatment and by the application of infected blood.
They burnt the effigies of the Chief Minister, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and the Health Minister, Dr Surya Kanto Misra and demanded their resignations.
Incidentally, a few years back, a large number of babies had died in the hospital allegedly due to doctors’ negligence and mal-treatment, which had resulted in a row.
Though today, no official bulletin was released either from the state Health Department or the hospital authorities, parents and guardians of the victims suspected that the deaths had been due to the transfusion of infected blood.
They suspected that the blood might have been tested with spurious test kits supplied to the government by Monozyme India.
