Infants’ families allege ill-treatment by hospital staff

Following the deaths of two male infants early on Saturday morning at Government Kilpauk Medical College Hospital (KMC), the grieving parents and angry families gathered on the hospital premises. They were demanding an answer from doctors for the deaths. 

Rasathi, the mother of one of the victims, while alleging the treatment had been inadequate, said the hospital had given a list of medicines and her husband, Munusamy, had to buy them from a pharmacy outside.

When her baby’s body was brought out of the mortuary on Saturday, she collapsed, sobbing. The bodies were handed over to the parents later in the morning.

Relatives of the infants alleged the

ayahs in the ward had asked for money and that the staff had been very discourteous to them.

Health secretary J. Radhakrishnan, said, “There are video monitors at the NICU and the babies were monitored constantly. We cannot liberally allow people inside the NICU where infection control is key. We have performed a verbal autopsy and a facility audit over the incident.”

Rumours abound

Meanwhile, rumours were doing the rounds of other babies dying at various hospitals. However, senior officials of Institute of Child Health and Children’s Hospital denied any such deaths at the State’s nodal centre.

What is Klebsiella?

Klebsiella, the cause of the infection that hospital authorities claimed the infants died of, is a gram-negative, rod-shaped bacteria found everywhere in nature. It can be transmitted through the air or person to person and can cause pneumonia, septicaemia in children and catheter-associated infections, doctors said.

According to neonatologist S. Subramanian, Klebsiella is a known cause of hospital-acquired infections. “Most healthy people can fight it off and it seldom causes a problem, but it can affect people with lowered immunity including infants. Once somebody acquires it, it is very difficult to treat, especially because recent strains are becoming resistant to antibiotics,” he said.