The Hindu : Front Page : One more woman dies in Jodhpur

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Sunday, Feb 27, 2011
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One more woman dies in Jodhpur

Special Correspondent

JODHPUR / JAIPUR: One more woman died after giving birth to a child in a Jodhpur hospital on Saturday, taking the number of such deaths, suspected to be caused by the injection of contaminated intravenous fluid (IV fluid), to 13 in the past 12 days.

The latest victim, 25-year-old Bhavna Gharu, had given birth to a baby girl on February 18 in Jodhpur's Umaid Hospital.

The authorities at the Mahatma Gandhi Hospital, where the young woman was shifted on February 19 after her condition worsened, attributed the immediate cause of her death to excessive post-delivery bleeding.

Her uterus also was removed, reportedly to stall the bleeding. Her child is alive. The victim's family lives in the Massoria locality of the town.

Soon after receiving the information, Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot convened a meeting of senior officials and doctors at his residence in Jaipur late in the evening. Rajendra Pareek, Minister in charge for Jodhpur, is presently there supervising the situation.

The condition of four other women, three admitted to the intensive care units of Umaid Hospital and one in Mahatma Gandhi Hospital, continues to be in critical.

The medical experts are seemingly not clear yet about the source of infection. This is especially when investigations revealed the presence of bacteria in the labour rooms of the two affected hospitals as well.

Moreover, other than the pregnant women, others injected with the IV fluid supplied by the same source did not report any problem.

Police sources in Jodhpur informed about the arrest of one more person during the day in connection with the supply of IV fluid, originally manufactured by a firm at Indore in Madhya Pradesh. With this, two persons are in police custody.

A team from the office of the Drug Controller seized 900 more cartons of the IV fluid manufactured by the company, Parental Surgical India Private Limited, during the day from a building in Sangaria locality of Jodhpur. Attempts are on to locate the entire stock and remove it from circulation.

The previous day the authorities in Madhya Pradesh had raided the manufacturing unit of the pharmaceutical company in Indore.

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