Woman falls on baby in ICU, crushes him

In a bizarre incident, a four-day-old infant was crushed to death after a woman accidentally fell on him inside the ICU of a Govt hospital, report Ravi Bajpai and Vidya Krishnan.

In a bizarre incident, a four-day-old infant was crushed to death after a woman accidentally fell on him inside the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of a government hospital in west Delhi last week.

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The premature underweight baby boy was unwell and was kept under observation in the hospital’s neo-natal nursery. No one, except the mother of a newborn, is supposed to enter this highly sterile unit.

At the Deen Dayal Upadhyay hospital, however, a nurse allowed an infant’s 70-year-old grandmother inside the nursery’s feeding room. The woman suffered a blackout and fell on the baby while he was being breastfed.

“She had brought milk in a breast pump for her granddaughter. She handed it to a nurse inside the nursery,” said Dr A Prasad, Medical Superintendent of the hospital.

The tragic lapse took place last Monday. A post mortem revealed that the baby died of head injuries. The child’s family lives in Raghubir Nagar.

A doctor at DDU said the woman shouldn’t have been allowed inside the feeding room. “The neo-natal nursery is out of bounds for attendants and relatives. Pumps are handed over to the nurse who feeds the baby if the mother can’t do it,” he said.

“It was an accidental death. The baby’s mother told us the woman collapsed unintentionally. The family did not want to file a case,” said Sharad Aggarwal, Deputy Commissioner of Police, West.