Gorakhpur deaths not due to oxygen shortage: Doctors Panel

NEW DELHI: The team of doctors sent from Delhi to Gorakhpur found no relation of oxygen shortage to the deaths reported at BRD Hospital and pointed out that fewer children died at the hospital from August 1-12 than a year ago.

“We have given an interim report to the Union health ministry. We did not find any relation of oxygen to the deaths reported here. Once we have more data and records which we have asked for, we will be able to comment further,” Dr Harish Chailani, the head of Department of the Paediatrics Wing of Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital told ET.

Chailani has been in Gorakhpur since Sunday morning along with Dr Sushma Nangia, the head of Department of Neo-Natal department at Lady Hardinge Hospital and Dr MK Agarwal, the deputy commissioner (immunology) of the National Immunisation Programme.

While 134 deaths were reported at BRD Hospital from August 1-12 this year, 138 deaths were reported at the hospital during the year-ago period, Chailani said. “In July this year, the death count at BRD was 200 while the death count last year in July was 292. The number of deaths or graph of mortality has in fact come down,” he said.

Chailani said the “mortality pre and post that day (August 10) was similar” and there was no abnormality in death figures on these days. “Our team is doing a detailed death audit of each of the 36 deaths reported from August 9-11 to establish the causes of death and where the now deceased child had been taken before being brought to BRD,” he said.

The team of doctors from Delhi is assisting the doctors at BRD Hospital to attend to encephalitis patients and improve the ‘medical protocol’ involved in their treatment. Most of the children who died between August 9 and August 11 were below two years of age. The UP government has marked a top-level probe under the UP chief secretary to probe the exact cause of 60 deaths in five days at BRD Hospital last week. The report is expected to be out in a week.

The UP health minister Siddharth Nath Singh had told ET in an interview on Sunday that no deaths occurred between 11:30 pm and 1:30 am on the night of August 10, when an oxygen shortage was reported.