Dr Kafeel Khan, who recently walked out of jail after getting arrested last year, also rubbished the Uttar Pradesh CM’s claim’s that the casualties were due to Japanese Encephalitis which usually breaks out at that time of the year.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath is doing politics and is misleading the people in the 2017 Gorakhpur infant death case, Dr Kafeel Khan, the paediatrician at Baba Raghav Das Medical College Hospital against whom a case has been filed, said on Monday.
Hitting out at the CM who denied there was a shortage of oxygen in the hospital, Khan told news agency ANI, “What the CM has said is incorrect. The oxygen supplier had written to the hospital authorities, asking it to clear his dues to continue the supply.”
Khan, who recently walked out of jail after getting arrested last year, also rubbished the CM’s claim’s that the casualties were due to Japanese Encephalitis which usually breaks out at that time of the year. “Newborns don’t get Encephalitis. Several of them had died in the incident,” he said.
More than 60 children, mostly infants, had died at the hospital within a week in August last year. There were allegations that the deaths occurred due to disruption in oxygen supply over unpaid bills to the vendor.
The remarks from the former nodal officer at BRD hospital came a day after the CM said that the issue was blown out of proportion and blamed the internal politics at the hospital for the controversy. Speaking at an event in Lucknow on Saturday evening, Adityanath had maintained his stand that there was no shortage of oxygen at the hospital and reasoned that had it been so, then the kids on the ventilator would have died first.
“After the incident came to light, I immediately asked the Director General Health, the Health Minister and the Medical Education Minister to reach the spot and report to me. Next day, I went there myself and came to know that there was no shortage of oxygen. Had it been oxygen shortage then the kids on the ventilator would have died first,” he had said. The BJP-led Uttar Pradesh government, however, had denied that shortage of oxygen led to the deaths.
Pointing his finger at the internal politics of the medical college behind the tragedy, Adityanath had said the situation was so grim that the doctors had to be counselled to bring normalcy. “On inquiry about the death figures, I came to know that it was a result of the internal politics of the medical college. It was such a sad situation that we had to counsel the doctors to deal with the issue. I asked them to focus on the root cause of encephalitis and their job at hand,” the CM had said.
