Five members of staff of the Gauhati Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), including the head of the paediatrics department, have been suspended in connection with the death of a newborn girl who was undergoing treatment at the institute’s neonatal ICU (NICU) on August 18.
The GMCH is the largest state government-run hospital in Assam. The staff members were suspended for negligence after the infant fell from a bed, got tangled in cables and died.
Head of the paediatrics department Dr Anupama Deka, associate professor in the same department, Dr Dipangkar Hazarika, nurses Gomti Devi and Chandana Nath, and ICU technician Ishanjyoti Talukdar, have been suspended for a period of six months. Additionally, the Srimanta Sankardeva University of Health Sciences, which the medical college is affiliated to, has suspended two post-graduate trainees, Dr Hrishikesh Thakuria and Dr Pooja Saikia, for a period of six months.
The GMCH superintendent said the suspended members of staff would also face departmental inquiries from their respective departments — the Medical Education and Research Department, Directorate of Health Services, and the Srimanta Sankardeva University.
These suspension orders, which cite attempts to mislead the probe team and improper maintenance of hospital records, have been issued following the submission of a inquiry report by a three-member committee — comprising Additional Chief Secretary Sweety Changsan, Director of Medical Education Dr Anup Barman and AIIMS Guwahati Head of the Department of Pediatrics Dr Jaya Shankar Kaushik — which had been constituted by the state government to probe the incident.
The baby had been born on August 15 and was undergoing treatment for jaundice at the NICU. She was strangulated by wires attached to the phototherapy bed when she fell from it. No staff was present in the room when the incident took place. A few days after the incident, a nurse on duty, Bhanupriya Misong, was arrested for culpable homicide.
