20 including 8 children die as hospital suffers power outage for 12 hours

20 patients, including 8 children succumbed to death allegedly due to a power outage for 12 hours at a Kurnool hospital on Thursday.

The outage occurred due to powerlines crossing over High Tension wires near the Kurnool Government General Hospital.

However, the hospital authorities deny the cause of deaths being power outage and blamed the staff for negligence.

The hospital superintendent, Dr J Veeraswami said that the duty RMO was not present during the power outage and also blamed a police outpost in the hospital premises, saying that it was drawing power from a HT power line adding that the crossing of electrical wires with the HT line led to the outage.

Even the Transco officials and the local police were blamed for the incident. While the police denied drawing power from a HT line, the Transco officials informed that they were not responsible for repairing the power lines in the hospital and that it is not their work to fix the issues in the hospital premises.

AP Health Minister Kamineni Srinivas has sought for a detailed report on the tragedy and expressed his dismay on finding that none of the doctors who were supposed to be on duty were present in the hospital when patients were dying.