BHOPAL: Minister for health and family welfare Prabhuram Choudhary has said that 646 children died in Shahdol in the past one year. He made the statement in the House on Wednesday. The minister’s reply came in the wake of a legislator, Satish Sikarwar’s inquiry about the number of deaths of children up to 10 years in the past two months.
Choudhary said 40,000 children had been born in the Shahdol division in the past one year. About the recent deaths of newborns in the district hospital at Shahdol, the minister said teams of doctors from Jabalpur and Bhopal were sent to Shahdol. Choudhary said he, himself, had visited the hospital where children had died of pneumonia and other infectious diseases. The health facilities were not up to the mark in the division, he said, adding that a dental surgeon was appointed as civil surgeon. For that reason, there was a dispute between the doctors and the civil surgeon and the children had died, he said.
