Lucknow
The parents of a year-old baby in Uttar Pradesh's Kannauj district have alleged that he died after doctors at a government hospital refused to treat him for fever and swollen neck.
A video of the father lying on the ground holding the child's body and weeping while the mother sits at a distance and cries inconsolably went viral on Monday.
Premchand and Asha Devi alleged, “Doctors agreed to examine the child only after onlookers started recording videos. Before that, no doctor was willing to touch my child. We pleaded for half an hour but they kept on saying 'take him to Kanpur'. With no money in hand, what could we have done?”
“The boy was brought to the hospital at 4.15 pm Sunday evening. And he died before our pediatrician could attend to him,” Rajesh Kumar Mishra, a top government official in Kannauj told the media.
Samajwadi Party and Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi both attacked the government over the incident.
UP gears up to control corona and encephalitis
With the onset of the Monsoon, the Yogi Adityanath-led UP government has geared up to tackle Coronavirus and Encephalitis both using a special surveillance program in July. Under the infectious disease control drive to be conducted from 1st to 31st July, the State's health and medical education departments have been instructed by the CM to focus on covid and encephalitis both.
While the number of corona cases in UP touched 22,000 on Monday, Japanese Encephalitis has been a cause of concern in the State for many years especially in eastern region including CM's home turf Gorakhpur killing scores of kids every monsoon. “The surveillance teams should visit the homes and distribute handbills showing corona preventive measures. This can prevent encephalitis as well, he observed,” Yogi told his officials.
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