Rats ate up his fingers, eyes.
By Raif Karerat
A newborn baby boy died after being attacked by rats at a pediatric ward in a government hospital in Andhra Pradesh.
“Early on Sunday morning, my son started crying,” the baby’s mother, Lakshmi Nagaraju, told the Indian Telegraph. “As we are not allowed to stand next to the incubator, I urged the nurses to check on him. By the time they did, rats had eaten away the fingers of his right hand and also the eye.”
Born on 17 August, the boy was placed under ventilator support after being treated for a congenital disorder.
“They [GGH Guntur staff] are responsible for the death of my child. We had been complaining about the presence of rodents for some days, but they did not take any action. We want our child back,” said the unidentified boy’s mother Lakshmi, reported The Hindu.
Despite being treated in the hospital’s ICU following the attack, the boy could not be saved and died on 27 August. According to the boy’s father, Chavali Nagaraju Babu, the hospital staff were both negligent and insensitive and told him he, “need not worry as [he has] another son.”
“The presence of rodents had come to our notice on Monday morning and I asked the engineering wing to carry out repairs to the false ceiling, but unfortunately this morning, the rodents attacked the newborn again,” said Dr. T. Venugopala Rao, the hospital’s superintendent, in The Hindu’s report.
The hospital allegedly put rat traps in place after the first complaint was made, according to NDTV, which also revealed that the state health minister, Dr K Srinivas, has ordered an official inquiry into the incident.