Baby boy given burns on abdomen by parents to treat swelling

This picture has been used for representation purpose

In a shocking incident, a three-month-old baby boy was administered burns with a hot sickle by his parents on advice of a quack to treat him for a swelling on his abdomen here in Maharashtra, officials said on Monday. The incident took place on June 20 in village Bortha under Chikhaldara tehsil in the Melghat tribal belt of Amravati district, said an official release from the district information office here. The baby has been admitted to the district general hospital here even as the Chikhaldara police have arrested the infant's father and a female 'bhumka' (witch doctor) who allegedly suggested the barbaric treatment, the release said.

The parents of the three-month-old baby boy, who had developed a swelling on his stomach, took him to the local quack instead of the government health centre, it said. The quack advised them to give burns with a hot sickle on the child's belly to mitigate the swelling and the parents acted accordingly, leaving the boy injured, the release said. When the news reached the flying health squad at Katkumbh, it rushed to the village and took the child to Churni Primary Health Centre from where he was shifted to the district general hospital accompanied by his mother, it said. Maharashtra Minister for Women and Child Development Yashomati Thakur enquired about the condition of the baby at the hospital, the release said.

Thakur, who is also Guardian Minister of Amravati, directed the district administrations to take all necessary steps to avoid recurrence of such incidents in the future. "It is sad to see such an incident happening in the tribal-dominated Melghat region even after having all medical facilities in place there. "There is an express need to put in place a competent machinery to arrest the occurrence of such superstitious incidents through an awareness programme," Thakur told PTI. She called for running an intensive public awareness campaign in Melghat with coordination of health, rural development, forest, police and revenue departments. "The administration should take a serious note of this incident and ensure such cases don't recur," the minister said.

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