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Russian police have arrested the chief doctor and the performing head of intensive care at a Siberian hospital the place 9 infants died this month, prosecutors mentioned Wednesday.
The case, which has shone a highlight on power employees shortages and funding gaps within the nation’s medical system, has provoked anger and bewilderment from Russian politicians and on-line commentators.
Prosecutors have charged the pair with negligence and inflicting demise by means of negligence, Russia’s Investigative Committee mentioned in an announcement.
The precise causes of the deaths at Novokuznetsk Maternity Hospital No. 1 aren’t but recognized. However regional well being authorities mentioned the infants had been all affected by a variety of illnesses and died throughout childbirth or being pregnant.
The native well being ministry mentioned in an announcement carried by Russian information businesses that 234 kids had been born on the hospital between Dec. 1 and Jan. 11, with 17 infants thought of to be in a severe situation within the hospital’s intensive care unit.
“Of the 17 infants in a crucial situation, 16 of them had been untimely, together with these with extraordinarily low start weight. All 17 had a extreme intrauterine an infection,” the well being ministry assertion mentioned. “Sadly, 9 kids didn’t survive.”
The Reuters information company, citing the Argumenty i Fakty newspaper, reported that the hospital obtained at the very least 5 warnings from well being authorities between August and November final yr.
Pavel Vorobyov, a Russian physician, questioned why no motion was taken earlier, Reuters reported.
“With the primary demise, they (medical doctors and nurses) ought to have bust a intestine and began doing one thing… when 9 folks have died and everyone seems to be silent, one thing very unusual is happening,” Argumenty i Fakty quoted him as saying.
Svetlana Sheremetyeva-Sherstnyov/REUTERS 
The hospital introduced on Tuesday that it had stopped accepting sufferers on account of a excessive charge of respiratory an infection.
“Between January 4 and January 12, 2026, 9 newborns died at Novokuznetsk Maternity Hospital No. 1 as a consequence of the suspects performing their official {and professional} medical duties in a substandard manner,” Russia’s Investigative Committee mentioned in an announcement.
A forensic probe into every child’s demise was underway, it added.
Russia’s Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid reported on Tuesday that the hospital was in need of dozens of employees, although the hospital has denied this.
The speaker of Russia’s higher home of parliament referred to as the incident a tragedy.
“It mustn’t ever be repeated,” Valentina Matvienko mentioned in an announcement.
The governor of the Kuzbass area, of which Novokuznetsk is a component, introduced Tuesday he had ordered an inspection of all of the area’s maternity and pre-natal hospitals.
And pro-Kremlin lawmaker Yana Lantratova mentioned on Telegram: “In occasions of a demographic disaster, permitting a number of infants to die in a single maternity hospital in such a brief interval is a criminal offense in opposition to the nation.”
The opposite maternity hospital in Novokuznetsk — a metropolis dwelling to round half 1,000,000 folks in southern Siberia — stays open, the area’s well being ministry mentioned.
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