Ex-Maldives Vice President Ahmed Adheeb Abdul Ghafoor, who sought asylum, sent back

Farukkhabad, Jan 14: In a shocking incident, a new-born baby was mauled to death by a dog inside the operation theatre (OT) of a private hospital in Farukkhabad on Monday.

Family members of the baby boy said that they noticed the hospital staff shooing a dog away from inside the operation theatre and soon after, they were told the baby boy, born just two hours ago, was dead.

The family members said that they found the baby's body on the floor and it had deep gashes around the neck and other parts of the body.

District magistrate Manvendra Singh has ordered an FIR and the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) Chandra Shekhar said the hospital has been sealed and an inquiry ordered into the incident.

Sources said that the hospital where the incident took place was unregistered and was being run adjacent to a government hospital.

According to the FIR lodged with Sadar Kotwali police, the infant's father Ravi Kumar said he had admitted his wife Kanchan in the hospital on Monday and she was taken for a C-section to the operation theatre.

After the delivery, Kanchan was shifted to the ward but the family was told that the baby would be shifted later.

An hour later, the family was informed that the baby had died.

The family members then saw the hospital staff trying to chase a dog out of the operation theatre.

The family members forced their way into the operation theatre and found the infant lying on the floor with several injuries on the neck.

The police said that the baby's body has been preserved for examination and post mortem.

The FIR has been registered against Dr Mohit Gupta, and some of the staff members who were present during the delivery.

The hospital owner, Vijay Patel, however, feigned complete ignorance about the incident and said that he had been told that the baby was born dead.

New Delhi, May 14: India may witness the death of additional 1.2-6 lakh children over the next one year from preventable causes as a consequence to the disruption in regular health services due to the COVID-19 pandemic, UNICEF has warned.

The warning comes from a new study that brackets India with nine other nations from Asia and Africa that could potentially have the largest number of additional child deaths as a consequence to the pandemic.

These potential child deaths will be in addition to the 2.5 million children who already die before their fifth birthday every six months in the 118 countries included in the study.

The estimate is based on an analysis by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health published in the Lancet.  

This means the global mortality rate of children dying before their fifth birthday, one of the key progress indicators in all of the global development, could potentially increase for the first time since 1960 when the data was first collected.

There were 1.04 million under-5 deaths in India in 2017, of which nearly 50% (0.57 million) were neonatal deaths. The highest number of under-5 deaths was in Uttar Pradesh (312,800 which included 165,800 neonatal deaths) and Bihar (141,500 which included 75,300 neonatal deaths).

The researchers looked at three scenarios, factoring in parameters like reduction in workforce, supplies and access to healthcare for services like family planning, antenatal care, childbirth care, postnatal care, vaccination and preventive care for early childhood. The effects are modelled for a period of three months, six months and 12 months.  

In scenario-1 marked by 10-18% reduction of coverage of all the services, the number of additional children deaths could be in the range of 30,000 plus over three months, more than 60,000 over six months and above 120,000 over the next 12 months.

Coronavirus India update: State-wise total number of confirmed cases, deaths on May 13

The numbers sharply rose to nearly 55,000; 109,000 and 219,000 respectively for scenario-2, which was associated with an 18-28% drop in all the regular services.

But in the worst-case scenario in which 40-50% of the services are not available, the number of additional deaths ballooned to 1.5 lakhs in the three months in the short-range to nearly six lakhs over a year.

The ten countries that could potentially have the largest number of additional child deaths are Bangladesh, Brazil, Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Uganda and Tanzania.

In countries with already weak health systems, COVID-19 is causing disruptions in medical supply chains and straining financial and human resources.

Visits to health care centres are declining due to lockdowns, curfews and transport disruptions, and due to the fear of infection among the communities. Such disruptions could result in potentially devastating increases in maternal and child deaths, the UN agency warned.

Paris, Jun 28: More than 10 million cases of the new coronavirus have been officially declared around the world, half of them in Europe and the United States, according to an AFP tally on Sunday based on official sources.

At least 10,003,942 infections, including 498,779 deaths, have been registered globally.

Europe remains the hardest hit continent with 2,637,546 cases including 195,975 fatalities, while the United States has 2,510,323 infections including 125,539 deaths.

The rate of infections worldwide continues to rise, with one million new cases recorded in just six days.

The tallies, using data collected by AFP from national authorities and information from the World Health Organization (WHO), probably reflect only a fraction of the actual number of infections.

Many countries are testing only symptomatic or the most serious cases and some do not have the capacity to carry out widescale testing.