Negligence in tagging RFID devices to mother and baby boy at Government General Hospital in Guntur led to kidnap of neonatal

A mother being tagged with the RFID device at the GGH Guntur, in the presence of Superintendent Y. Kiran Kumar on Tuesday (October 8).
| Photo Credit: T VIJAY KUMAR

Negligence in attaching the radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to both mother and neonatal baby on their hands and the failure of the staff at the Government General Hospital (GGH) in Guntur was exposed after a newborn baby boy was kidnapped within hours after the birth, on Monday (October 7).

The Hospital is equipped with RFID technology and a contract was given to a private company which supplies the machines and tags for both the mother and the baby. As per the agreement, the agency has to provide more than 600 reusable machines along with tags per month. But, the company failed to maintain even 40% of the stock, as per the agreement.

“The RFID is wireless automatic identification and data capture (AIDC) technology that enables the identification of both mother and baby round-the-clock. If the baby is moved away from the mother and taken away about 60 metres, then it raises an alarm and shares the location of the baby. As soon as the alert is generated, the baby can be identified and returned to the mother. This is the actual process of the system,” Superintendent of GGH Guntur Y. Kiran Kumar told The Hindu.

Further, despite repeated requests and appeals, the supplying agency was not taking any steps for improvement, Dr. Kiran said. “In the October 7 incident, neither the mother nor the baby boy was tagged with the RFID devices. On the other hand, the kidnapper entered the hospital pretending to be an in-patient mother, hence the staff could not recognize. The kidnapper took the baby as her baby. If the pairing RFID tags had been placed on the mother and baby, then it might have alerted the hospital staff and others.”

Dr. Kiran Kumar said that, fortunately, with the help of CCTV footages, the hospital staff managed to identify the accused and help the police track the kidnapper. The police were able to bring back the baby within hours of the incident. The RFID tags must be attached to the mother and baby and they should not be detachable, the GGH Superintendent said, adding that the private agency was supplying removable tags and it was not supplying adequate quantity.

Manager of the supplying agency, Cal On Instruments, C. Kiran conceded that, they were not supplying the required numbers, despite repeated requests from the hospital. Initially, they supplied 600 machines — 300 for mothers and another 300 for babies — but, over time they lost the equipment and currently they have only 224 with them at the hospital. These are sufficient for 112 mothers and 112 babies, but, the hospital has more than 200 mothers and equal number of babies on any given day, Hospital Superintendent explained.

The vendor has blamed the shortage of equipment on the hospital staff saying that the agency has not been informed the discharge schedule of the patients and so they could not collect the RFID devices. The agency manager wanted the hospital staff to either let them know the discharge schedule of the patients well in advance, or recover the devices from them.

It is the supplying agency’s responsibility to collect and supply adequate number of devices, the GGH Superintendent said. The same company has been supplying these devices to 16 hospitals in the State and the same problem is being faced in all the institutions, according to hospital sources.