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been admitted to the NICU.

Speaking to reporters at the hospital, Prof Zahid said one of the guardians in the post-operative room complained around 2:00am that the babies were feeling cold.

“Following the complaint, the air conditioning system in the room was reportedly shut down for around an hour.... The condition of one of the newborns deteriorated around 4:00am, and the child was shifted to the NICU. About half an hour later, the baby was returned to the post-operative room after showing signs of improvement.”

He added that around 6:00am, a nurse found one of the babies motionless. “The child was then taken to the NICU. Then, as the condition of the other newborns worsened, all of them were shifted there.”

The six infants died within one to two hours, Prof Zahid said.

Prof Nahid Yasmin, director general (hospitals and nursing) of the Ad-din Foundation, said they suddenly came to know about respiratory problems among the six newborns.

“The six babies were rushed to the NICU around 6:00am, when it was found that two of them had already died while the others were in critical condition. They were put on ventilation support but could not survive,” she told reporters.

About the allegations of mismanagement made by the victim families, she said the incident happened so suddenly that they did not get time to assess the situation properly.

“Our doctors did their best, but their respiratory problems were so severe that they could not be saved,” she said, adding that such an incident had not occurred at the hospital before since it started providing services in 1997.

However, Janu Begum, grandmother of one of the babies, said her three-day-old grandchild was fine earlier. “Around Fajr, all the children in the room started crying and were later taken to the NICU.

“We came to this hospital from Dohar, on the outskirts of Dhaka, hearing about their good service. But now many mothers have lost their babies due to the hospital’s mismanagement. I want you [journalists] to write about this properly so that no other mother has to lose her child,” she told this newspaper at the hospital premises.