Nabarangpur: A two-month-old baby boy from Khuntiaguda village of Tentulikhunti block in Nabarangpur district was admitted to the district headquarters hospital Friday in a critical condition after being branded by a village quack on several parts of his body.
The incident came as a rude shock as the district collector, barely days back, had received a cash award of Rs15 lakh on behalf of the district from the Chief Minister for coming second in the state for successfully conducting a health awareness campaign to check branding.
According to reports, Gita and Yunesh Harijan’s son of Khuntiaguda village had a swollen belly. The baby was not feeding well, the family said. Gita’s mother-in-law Shukaldei Harijan Thursday called a quack Sunamani Das and applied the traditional ‘therapy’ on the infant when his parents were absent. The quack branded the baby all over his body using a hot iron rod to ‘treat’ him of the swollen belly, ASHA worker Niranjani Harijan said.
Niranjani said she got wind of the incident while on a door-to-door visit for observance of Mamata Diwas. She immediately took the baby to Tentulikhunti CHC and later shifted him to the district headquarters hospital after administering first aid.
Chief district medical officer Anup Kumar Ghosh said this was the first incident after the launch of the anti-branding awareness programme. The baby has been admitted to the special neonatal care unit of the hospital and the collector would be apprised of the incident, Ghosh added.
On the other hand, it is learnt that the CDPOs are yet to submit the utilisation certificates to the concerned authorities even as district administration had granted lakhs of rupees to generate awareness on the social malady. PNN
