Ajmer Infants' Death: Child Rights Commission Says 'System Negligent'

Ajmer: The government hospital in Rajasthan's Ajmer where 16 infants died in the last two weeks is under the scanner.

A team of official from national child rights commission highlighted poor facilities and lack of cleanliness at the Jawaharlal Nehru Children's hospital. The team found that the hospital, the biggest in the district, is severely short staffed.

Despite the temperatures touching almost 45 degrees, the long lines were witnessed outside the hospital that serves four neighboring districts in Ajmer division.

"We have to line up for hours before we are attended to, the waiting is almost one to two hours," said Salman father of a patient.

"The hospital has only eight senior doctors to attend hundreds of patients," said Dr Vikrant the head of the department of the pediatrics department at the hospital.

Rupa Kapoor, member National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, who visited the hospital on Wednesday, said: "There is negligence from top to bottom. I will not say that doctors are completely at fault, they are struggling with patients brought to them at the last minute in a critical state. However, the negligence is in the entire system and if we want to improve the system we will have to start from the scratch."

All newborns, who died in this hospital came from rural areas and were referred late to the hospital from rural primary health centers. More so, all were less than 21 days old and had very poor birth weight putting them at risk of infection.

When NDTV conducted a surprise check at the hospital it was found that most doctors were without gloves or masks even when attending to patients.

After the alarming number of infant deaths at the hospital, a senior doctor has now been put on night duty.

"We have improved the floor duty, there is more nursing staff now and at night we have an assistant professor posted round-the-clock," said Dr PC Verma, medical superintendent, JLN Hospital.