Kota (Rajasthan): After ten infants died in Kota’s J.K. Lon government hospital on December 23 and 24, the toll has only been increasing. Over 963 babies died at the hospital in 2019, and hundred of them died in December alone.
The hospital record suggests the cause of deaths is natural, but the hospital’s management having been in tatters over the last few years doesn’t inspire confidence in the verdict.
The condition of the J.K. Lon hospital worsened after the head of the paediatrics department and the superintendent were changed in 2017. The new head Amrit Lal Bairwa and the superintendent H.L. Meena never got along, which affected the hospital’s administration.
“Relations between Bairwa and Meena were not cordial. They would abuse each other in front of the hospital staff in the meetings,” a senior hospital official told The Wire on condition of anonymity. “Later, they began avoiding the hospital when the other person was present. And with the lack of discipline among the top authorities, even the staff and the doctors turned casual.”
Hospital maintenance, especially that of equipment installed in its critical care units, also went for a toss.
“The equipment are checked every month, and if there is any issue with their functioning, the head of the concerned department writes to the superintendent to get it fixed,” one staff member said. “But here no contractor was ready to rectify the equipment since the two never let the payment order pass.”
(After the contractor rectifies the equipment, the head of the department has to verify them before payment can be released.)
Bairwa simply pointed the finger at Meena: “I wrote several times to the superintendent but he took no action,” he said. However, he refused to provide copies of the letter because they were “government property”.
The post of superintendent – Meena’s station – is considered to be “political” in that there are no fixed selection procedures in place and appointments to which are often based on political connections.
Meena was superintendent of J.K. Lon hospital while also being in charge at the Satellite District Hospital in Kota, and the blood bank. This raised eyebrows.
“It is difficult for a person to manage a single government hospital and the former superintendent was handling three hospitals. In such a situation, the administration is bound to suffer and that’s what happened at J.K. Lon too,” a senior official who didn’t wish to be named told The Wire.
On the other hand, the head of the department is simply the senior-most professor in the medical college.
Playing politics
The matter of infant deaths in Kota has become a political battleground for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress.
Rajasthan is currently in Congress rule, under the chief-ministership of Ashok Gehlot. Om Birla, the Lok Sabha speaker and a member of the BJP, is the Lok Sabha MP from Kota.