The death of 60 infants in a span of 13 days brought the childcare facility Sishu Bhavan to headlines.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is now asking for the Health and Family Welfare Minister Atanu S Nayak to step down on moral grounds from his position. They started protesting in front of the various hospitals in Odisha.
"This is high time, the minister steps down and the government ensures that no more children die at Sishu Bhavan," BJP leader Samir Mohanty said.
They hold the minister responsible for the "inefficiency." They further claimed that this crisis is not happening in the place alone but also across the state. "We demand the resignation of health minister over the large scale infant death incidents at Sishu Bhavan in Cuttack," Sashmita Behera, President of the Odisha Pradesh Mahila Congress Committee said.
But the health minister responded to the protest saying that "the BJP's agitation is politically motivated. A senior BJP leader who lost elections against me in 2014 polls has been engineering such agitation. There should be no politics over the death of children."
On the other hand, according to superintendent Niranja Mohanty, "most of the children brought in here are in a very critical condition, having less chance of survival at the last moment." He further added that the case is not shocking as this is almost the same compared with other hospitals in the country.
They claimed that approximately 500 infants are rushed to the hospital every day. Deaths most likely result to the inability of the medical team to cope with the rush and the waiting time for infants to be admitted.
