Gilgit March 16 (TNS): A family in the Nomal area of Gilgit-Baltistan is mourning the death of their two-year-old child who died at a hospital that ran out of oxygen.
Locals said that Shahzada Syed Hassan, 2, had plunged into a channel gushing with water and he was pulled out of the stream after a few minutes search.
According to the family members, the child, who was gasping for oxygen, was immediately taken to the government hospital in Nomal where no emergency service was available. The desperate parents took the child to the nearby Aga Khan Health Centre at Chelmish, which also lacked the oxygen. Staff at the hospital tried with a manual pump to push air into the child, however, he died battling the exhaustion.
The death prompted strong resentment and anger among the locals and the parents, who said that the Gilgit-Baltistan chief minister always beats about the bush in providing health facilities across the G-B but on the grounds, things were nastiest and hospitals ran out of medicine.
They have demanded that the GB government and the health department ensured the provision of oxygen kits and uninterrupted electricity to hospitals which also lack life-saving medcine and often face power outages.
