NPR

Over 900 Infants Died In One Hospital In India In 2019. What Went Wrong?

In December 10 children died within a 48-hour period — and that story made nationwide headlines. Politicians are casting blame — and the government is investigating.

In December 2019 and in the first week of January, 104 infants died in a government-run hospital in Kota, a city in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan.

And in one 48-hour period in mid-December at the J.K. Lon Maternal and Child Hospital, there were ten deaths: five newborns and five children under 2 years of age.

The deaths made nationwide headlines, but despite the media coverage — and the ensuing political infighting over the cause of the deaths — this is not a new turn of events. Over the course of 2019, the hospital recorded 940 infant deaths.

Hospital authorities did not comment on specifics except to note that some of the infants had low birth weight. The World Health Organization that babies who die within the first 28 days of birth often suffer

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