MoPH of KBR finds no violations in the hospital where newborns died

The Republic's Children's Hospital (RCH) of the Kabardino-Balkarian Republic (KBR) was inspected by the local Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) in the context of the eight deaths of newborns that occurred in the hospital in the first decade of January. According to specialists of the Ministry, the doctors had acted properly.

"The commission of experts of the MoPH of the KBR has reviewed the medical records of the babies and came to the conclusion that the medical staff had acted correctly," said the press officer of the Ministry.

A check of the death of eight newborns will be also conducted by the Prosecutor's Office of Nalchik.

The topic of death of eight newborns in the intensive care unit RCH was raised by the reader of the "Caucasian Knot" under the nickname Asarah on January 13. He wrote: "Nothing is given in the media on the death of eight babies in the intensive care unit in the Dubki District of Nalchik; everything is hushed down."

Parents believe that newborns could die because of electricity outage

"On January 6, a power failure happened at the hospital. The babies remained without oxygen for 20 minutes until the back-up generator was switched on," said the woman who lost her boy, born with the weight of 1800 grams.

According to her story, her boy "had respiratory insufficiency, but it is curable." "My boy was on the mend; and doctors said that his condition was stable. When the power failed, I was in the intensive care unit. The outage lasted for about 30 minutes. Then, a back-up generator was engaged, but after five minutes it turned off, allegedly, it failed to cope with the load; and 20 minutes later the centralized power supply was restored," said the woman.

She added that "when there was no power, nurses and doctors pumped oxygen manually; for my child I did it myself."

The woman said that power outages happened also on Saturday, January 7 (for 15 minutes), and on Sunday, January 8. "Before these power failures my child was on artificial respiration by only 10-15 percent; after them he was completely transferred to artificial respiration," she said.

"Then I heard that a doctor said, after making an examination round, that 'all the babies were in critical condition.' As to my child, I was told that his condition was 'extremely grave.' I asked whether it had to do with power cuts. The doctor said 'Yes'," the woman added.

Diana Mukofova from Argudan gave birth to a girl weighing 1300 grams. "My little girl could not breathe herself, and was on artificial respiration. On January 8, I wanted to go to see her, but, after calling to find out what the baby needs, I heard, 'I'm sorry but your baby died.' Then, the disconnected and nobody else spoke to me about my baby," said Mukofova. According to her story, "the head of the unit did not answer my question about the reason of the death."

Chief physician: babies died from pathologies

Svetlana Indrokova, the acting chief physician of the RCH, resolutely denies any association of power outages with the babies' deaths. According to her version, on the day of power outage only one baby died, who was nit connected to artificial respiration.

"Are artificial respiration devices are on batteries. After a power outage, they worked for some time on their own. Besides, they pumped oxygen by hand," said the doctor.

In Ms Indrokova's opinion, the babies died because they were born prematurely with severe pathologies. The diagnoses announced after their birth included sepsis, syndrome of respiratory disorder, intracranial haemorrhage, intrauterine infection, intestine necrosis with peritonitis, etc. All the babies were taken to hospital in extremely grave condition, stressed the physician.

"None of them died because of doctors' negligence - I state it with full responsibility," Svetlana Indrokova has concluded.