Mumbai:

Demanding an impartial CBI probe into the spate of deaths in government hospitals across Maharashtra, former Chief Minister and UBT chief Uddhav Thackeray on Friday asked the government who is responsible for the Nanded deaths and where the Chief Minister is in this difficult time.

“This government has no moral right as they have money to spend on advertisements but no funds to save people’s lives. Who is responsible? Where is CM at this difficult time? It was the responsibility of CM and Deputy CM to go and find out the reason for this,” he added,” Uddhav Thackeray said while addressing a press conference in Mumbai.

Following the hearing on the recent deaths of patients at a government hospital in Nanded, Mr Thackeray said that until and unless the court teaches them lessons, they won’t realise.

“Until and unless the court teaches them lessons they won’t realise, in the past also court has made an observation and slammed the government, what about the task force we have formed to take than the Covid-19 pandemic, why aren’t this government taking help of this tasks force, Uddhav suggested the government,” he said.

The Bombay High Court has asked the Maharashtra government to file an affidavit on the steps taken to fill vacancies in government hospitals in the last six months.

The court has also asked the state government to mention the demand and supplies of medicines to the government hospitals in the last six months.

He further slammed Maharashtra’s Chief Minister Eknath Shinde over his Delhi visit and said “People here in the state are dying and the Chief minister is in Delhi attending some Naxal-related meetings but I want to say if it continues then many more people will lose their lives than people die during naxal attack.”

Comparing his government tenure work with the Shinde government, he said that during COVID-19, the same doctors, deans, nurses, and ward boys were there and served the patients by risking their lives.

“As per my knowledge, Maharashtra was the only state where medicines were delivered through drones in remote regions… Since the last few days, news has been coming from Thane, Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, Nagpur, and Nanded, and news is still coming from some places that there is a shortage of medicine,” he added.

At least 31 people died in the government-run Dr Shankarrao Chavan Medical College and Hospital Nanded, reportedly due to an alleged scarcity of medicines.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Mumbai:

Enough medicine orders were not placed to meet the drug demand of government hospitals in Maharashtra, alleged a drug’s body after an acute medicine shortage led to a hospital tragedy in the state.

Haffkine Biopharmaceutical placed only 12 orders this year against the usual annual average of up to 2,000 orders to supply medicines to medical colleges and government hospitals, said Abhay Pandey, President, All Food and Drug License Holders Foundation.

The explosive charge comes after 31 patients died in a span of 48 hours in a government hospital in Nanded.

“This year, Haffkine has provided only 10% of the medicines to the medical colleges of Maharashtra state against the demand, due to which there is a shortage of medicines in the medical colleges,” said Mr Pandey.

Haffkine is responsible for meeting 70% of the medicine demands, he added.

New Delhi:

Outside the hospital in Maharashtra’s Nanded where 31 patients, including 16 newborns, have died in 48 hours, families recount horrific details of neglect by the nursing staff.

The father of a two-year-old with a chronic heart problem has been moping the floor under his daughter’s hospital bed. He narrated details of an allegedly irresponsible hospital staff and the shortage of medicines.

“My two-year-old daughter is here for nearly a week now,” he told NDTV. She is suffering from a cardiac condition that requires a surgery. However, the girl is also suffering from pneumonia and the family came to this hospital to get her treated before they can go to Mumbai for the surgery.

“We were headed for Mumbai but they asked us to treat the pneumonia first. So, we came here,” he said.

At this hospital, their agony only compounded. “Nurses make us wait if we ask them to turn off the intravenous fluids. Sometimes, we have to do it ourselves. The nurses sit outside and are on their phones. They get angry if we ask them twice,” he said.

“Once as I tried to insert the intravenous tube, a little amount of blood oozed out. Even then I could not get the nurses to help,” the hapless father recounted.

“They tell us when medicines are over and ask us to get it from outside the hospital,” he said.

The families are not just procuring medicines from outside, they are also cleaning the area around the hospital beds of their patients.

“The cleaning staff ask us to clean under the beds and I have been doing that for the past two days,” he said.

Sanitation is one of the many problems plaguing this hospital. “The bathrooms here are dirty. Stale food is dumped there. There are machines in the hospital but they don’t work. Patients are sent outside for tests, including MRIs and CT Scans,” said a patient’s relative.

Thirty-one patients died at the state-run Shankarrao Chavan Government Hospital in Maharashtra’s Nanded that made national headlines on Monday following 24 deaths in 24 hours. Among these 31 patients, 16 were infants or children.

The condition of as many as 71 patients at the hospital is still critical.

Allegations of shortage of staff and medicines have been levelled against the hospital whose dean, on Monday, said procurement did not happen as scheduled from the Haffkine Institute from where all government hospitals in the state buy their medicines.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde said his government has taken the deaths at a hospital in Nanded very seriously, and appropriate action will be taken after a detailed inquiry. He denied that there were shortages of medicines and staff.

“The deaths are unfortunate. We have taken the incident very seriously. An inquiry has been ordered and action will be taken appropriately,” the chief minister said.

The Opposition in Maharashtra launched an all-out attack on the Eknath Shinde government in the state on Monday, saying the “triple-engine sarkar (of the BJP, Eknath Shinde Sena and the Ajit Pawar faction of NCP) should take responsibility”.

This comes less than two months after 18 patients died in 24 hours in August at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Hospital in Kalwa in Thane. Twelve of them were above the age of 50.

Mumbai:

Seven more patients, four of them children, died late last night at the government hospital in Maharashtra’s Nanded that made national headlines yesterday following 24 deaths in 24 hours. This takes the death count in the Shankarrao Chavan Government Hospital in the past 48 hours to 31. Among these 31 patients, 16 were infants or children.

The condition of as many as 71 patients at the hospital is still critical, it is learnt.

Dr Shyamrao Wakode, the dean of the hospital, has rejected allegations of medical negligence. He has also said that there was no shortage of medicines or doctors, and stressed that the patients did not respond to treatment despite being given proper care.

Maharashtra Medical Education Minister Hasan Mushrif is on his way to Nanded. Speaking to news agency ANI, he said, “I am on my way to Nanded. This should not have happened. There was no shortage of medicines or doctors. We will investigate every death, and anyone found negligent will be punished.”

A senior Maharashtra government official has said a committee has been formed to probe the deaths. “A three-member expert committee from Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar district has been formed with a mandate to submit a report. I am personally visiting the hospital to review the situation,” Dr Dilip Mhaisekar, Director, Medical Education and Research, told news agency PTI yesterday.

The deaths in the government hospital have triggered a sharp attack by the Opposition on the Eknath Shinde-led government in the state.

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has sought a detailed probe, saying the incident was “extremely painful, serious and worrying”. Mr Kharge also referred to a similar incident at a government hospital in Thane in August, when 18 patients died within a short interval.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi targeted the BJP, part of the ruling coalition in Maharashtra. “The BJP government spends thousands of crores on publicity, but there is no money to buy medicines of children?” he asked in a post on X.

Maharashtra Congress leader and former Chief Minister Ashok Chavan has said the Eknath Shinde government should take up the matter and provide immediate help to the Nanded hospital.

Addressing the media yesterday, the hospital’s dean had said the 12 newborns who died in the hospital on September 30-October 1 were in the 0-3 days age group and had “very low weight”.

“There are 142 admissions in the paediatric department, of which 42 are still critical. Oxygen and ventilator facilities are there. The patients are from neighbouring districts, including Hingoli, Parbhani and Washim. Some are from villages in neighbouring Telangana,” he had said.

“Among the 12 adults who lost their lives, five were male and seven female. Four adults had heart-related ailments, one was suffering from an unknown poisoning, one had a liver issue, two were kidney patients, and one case was of complications during pregnancy. There were three accident cases,” the Nanded district administration said in a statement.