How India is failing its infants long before they arrive at hospitals

Soon after the death of 70 infants in a tertiary care hospital in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh (UP), made the headlines last month, similar stories began to pour in from across the country. Ninety children were reported to have died in two months in Rajasthan’s Banswara district hospital; in the month of August alone, 55 children had died in Maharashtra’s Nashik Civil Hospital and 49 in UP’s Farrukhabad District Hospital.

Tragic as these deaths were, they were hardly unusual, IndiaSpend found on visiting half a dozen primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare centres in Jharkhand, another state that reported numerous infant deaths. Doctors told IndiaSpend that such seemingly high child death figures were routine for the months of July and August, when infections peak and already overburdened hospitals are unable to cope.

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Courtesy: The Hindu