A father says his baby on oxygen died in his arms at a hospital in Juba after the management switched off the generator over the weekend.

Baby Manasseh Chien was admitted to El Sabah children’s hospital on the first of May for dyspnea – a difficulty in breathing.

His father Peter Madol says he had since then been on oxygen support.

Madol says due a policy of switching off the generator, his son died on the 15^th of May.

“When the generator was switched off, the oxygen machine had to stop. The child breathed for sometime but the breathing stopped and he died. I think it was a policy of the hospital that, the generator has to go off at 12:00 whether someone is on that support or not they just switch it off.”

The father of the deceased said that it was not the first time he was witnessing such in the hospital.

“It has happened not only to my child. I have witnessed some two other children during my 2 weeks stay in the hospital. It is painful not because I lost a kid, it is painful because I am foreseeing other South Sudanese dying the same way. If there was a kind of an intervention, it could be better. It is painful because others are going to die the same way, the government should intervene.”

This is the second time this year a child is being reported dead under the same circumstance.

In early April, a civil society leader told Eye Radio that he was shocked at how nurses at El Sabah Children’s hospital were handling the sick children at the facility.

Rajab Muhandis said, he noticed reluctance among health workers on duty, congestion in the wards, poor hygiene and sanitation in the wards and the surrounding and long hours of waiting before a child receives treatment.

“I was surprised by the experience I got in those health centers. First the child was born at that clinic, the midwife who was in charge of this process; who was on duty was harsh and aggressive towards my own people who wanted to help and attend to the birth of the child and witness and maybe support in the process.”