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69 Children Have Died in Gorakhpur's BRD Medical College In the Last 4 Days, Says Report

Terrible news.
Hindustan Times via Getty Images

After the tragedy two months ago where more than 60 children had died in Gorakhpur's BRD medical college, reports suggest that another such disaster has unfolded in the hospital in Uttar Pradesh with the death of 69 children since October 7.

Indian Express reports that 12 children died on October 7, 20 on October 8, 18 died on October 9 and 19 died on October.

The report says that of the 19 deaths yesterday, 13 were newborns. All of them have reportedly died of Acute Encephalitis Syndrome.

This disaster should, perhaps, serve as a wake up call for Yogi Adityanath who had bragged about UP's health care at a rally in Kerala. He had even said that Kerala should learn how to run hospitals from UP.

Adityanath's statements ring hollow at a time when, clearly, the health care system is consistently failing to cope up with an encephalitis epidemic.

This comes even has the Uttar Pradesh government had faced severe criticism for the deaths of 60 children, allegedly because of lack of oxygen, which the government had vehemently denied.

The National Human Rights Commission had issued a notice to the Government of Uttar Pradesh saying it "has observed that reported deaths, in such a large number in a government run hospital, amount to serious violation of Right to Life and Health of the innocent victims. This indicates towards gross callousness on part of the hospital administration and the Medical Education and Health Department of the Government of Uttar Pradesh. Earlier also, it has come across several instances of deaths in the hospitals due to Japanese Encephalitis."

The chief of the hospital, who was suspended after the incident two months ago, had also blamed the government of apathy.

"The delay (in payments) happened because the funds hadn't come in," Dr Misra had said at a press conference after his suspension.

He said that he had written three letters to the government flagging the issue. The first letter, he said, was sent to the government on 3 July.

The government, meanwhile, had said that deaths of children in the hospital this year was much lower than previous years due to steps taken by the administration.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.