India’s Infamous Hospital

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 15 March 2018

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On the night of August 10 2017, India went into mourning. 30 patients lost their lives in 24 hours when the oxygen supply to a hospital in Uttar Pradesh was suddenly cut. Images of the dead children and stories of parents trying to resuscitate their loved ones became emblematic of corruption and mismanagement in the country’s public health system. BRD hospital where the tragedy took place is no stranger to high rates of infant mortality. The hospital’s catchment includes some of India’s poorest and most medically vulnerable citizens. A primary centre for treating encephalitis, it’s common to see up to 400 children dying per month in the peak monsoon season. But the events of August 10th were different. With the state authorities now having made arrests and vowing to punish those responsible for the hospital’s lethal dysfunction, Assignment tracks down those who witnessed the original tragedy, to build an illuminating picture of what happened on one infamous night.

Reporter: Krupa Padhy Producer: Mike Gallagher

Transcript

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0:00.0	This week's assignment on the BBC World Service tells a story that's shocked India. But one which some people
0:16.2	there might not want you to hear. This woman's clearly devastated. I'm just
0:21.5	trying to establish what's happened.
0:24.0	In Gephylitis is too.
0:26.0	The child's got encephalitis.
0:28.0	We're in a region of India that's rife with encephalitis,
0:31.0	an inflammation of the brain caused by infection, which is especially
0:35.5	dangerous to young children.
0:38.4	This is Uttar Pradesh in the north of the country, and we're outside a hospital that's become notorious for its high in kephalitis death rate.
0:47.0	She says, my child, my baby child, my child.
0:51.0	What's going to do? my child. months old. We get patients from 130 kilometers radius.
1:07.0	All of them coming to this place.
1:10.0	We are overweight.
1:12.0	As Dr. Rakish Saxena explains,
1:15.0	Baba Ragavdaas, or BRD Medical College in Gorakboo,
1:19.0	struggles to cope.
1:21.0	This dilapidated public hospital is the only tertiary health facility in a region of over 60 million people.
1:30.0	We get a lot of her back patients here.
1:33.0	Pre-mature, low birth weight, infected,
1:37.0	traveling from miles.
1:40.0	So they finally land here.
1:41.0	And by the time they land here they are really sick.
	...

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