Two children and a mother allegedly died of hunger and Malnutrition within a week in Uttar Pradesh’s Kushinagar, reported the NDTV on Thursday.
30-year-old Sangeeta and her eight-year-old son Suraj, both died on September 7 and while the government officially declared that the cause of their death was hunger and malnutrition, the villagers allege negligence.
The deceased family was listed under Scheduled Castes and is said to be extremely poor. Sangeeta’s husband Virendra (35), who is a daily wage earner told the news website, “Mother and son started vomiting around 7 am that day. When their condition deteriorated, I called a government ambulance and managed to take them to a hospital by 10 am.
“Doctors first admitted both Sangeeta and Suraj, but later they referred them to a larger district hospital in Padrauna. Both of them died in the ambulance, on the way,” he added. While, Sangeeta’s fifth and youngest daughter Geeta, who was merely two months old, died five days later on Tuesday,
According to the report, social workers had reportedly requested local government’s health workers to take the two-month-old baby to a nutrition centre but none of them reacted and she died.
Ironically all of those deaths took place at a time When Uttar Pradesh government is celebrating the “National Nutrition Month.”
The district administration, however, refused such allegations and claimed that is no doubt they were extremely poor but hunger was not the reason for their death. “You can’t deny they were poor. But there are other poor people in this village. They died because they were not following a proper diet,” Hari Narayan Singh, Chief Medical Officer of the district told the news website.
“We have no grain in the house. I haven’t eaten all day today. I have an MNREGA job card but I have not got any work in the last year,” said Virendra, who feeds the family by doing odd jobs.
He did not even get a ration for this month… “They got ration last month. This month’s ration had not been distributed. There is no doubt that the family is very poor,” said Dinesh Verma, the village pradhan or chief.
If we talk about Malnutrition in India, Uttar Pradesh is one of the most affected states by malnutrition, which has already claimed several lives due to hunger. But UP government has denied them saying they are trying to ensure subsidised food grain, especially for the poor, without any leaks.
Also read: New Delhi: 3 sisters die due to hunger, malnourishment