Some 109 children have so far died at a government hospital in northern India since the beginning of December, said a hospital official on Sunday, even as local authorities scrambled to bring in additional staff and equipment amid a rising outcry over poor health care facilities in the country.
"The death toll since Dec. 1 stands at 109," Suresh Dulara, the medical superintendent of JK Lon Hospital in Kota, in the northwestern state of Rajasthan, told Reuters on Sunday.
The deaths, which have begun to grab national headlines in the last week, have sparked a social media firestorm about the deplorable state of many government health care facilities.