DUSHANBE, January 14, Asia-Plus - A prosecutor’s office in Dushanbe’s Ismoili Somoni district it to investigate the death of baby at Dushanbe maternity house # 3, Tajik chief prosecutor Bobojon Bobokhonov announced at a news conference on January 14.   

According to him, the Prosecutor-General’s Office has not yet received any official application on this subject but the prosecutor’s office in the Ismoili Somonis district was already instructed to probe into the incident.   

We will recall that because of electricity supply cutoff physicians at maternity house # 3 have failed to save newborn baby.  Tragedy occurred at Dushanbe maternity house on the night of January 8-9. 

According to father of dead baby Saymurod Doustov, who is head of the information department of the People’s Democratic Party (PDPT), his wife needed c-section to go into labor and the newborn baby respiratory insufficiency required artificial pulmonary ventilation.

Medical workers used APV machine and said the baby is in a stable condition.  But at 9:00 p.m., electricity supply to the maternity house was cut off in accordance with electricity rationing introduced in some areas of Dushanbe and it took them 10-15 minutes to start up the generator and resume work of the APV machine. 

“The generator worked for seven minutes and then failed,” said Doustov, “We had to bring the generators from home that took another 45 minutes; all this time, medical workers manually helped the baby breathe.”  However, the baby died by 4:00 a.m. on January 9.     

            In the meantime, this baby is not the first victim of electricity shortages.  Two newborn babies died under similar circumstances at Dushanbe maternity house # 1.