Russia detains top doctors at Siberian hospital after nine babies die

Authorities in Russia have detained the chief doctor and acting head of the intensive care unit at a Siberian maternity hospital after nine newborn babies died in just a few days earlier this month, investigators said on Wednesday.

The deaths have provoked widespread shock and anger in Russia, where standards of medical care can vary vastly from world-class in major research hospitals to poor in some remote regional medical centres.

The babies, born between December 1 and January 12, all died during Russia's long New Year holiday at Hospital No. 1 in Novokuznetsk, a city of half a million people in southern Siberia, according to investigators.

It has not been officially disclosed so far why the newborns died.

Russia's State Investigative Committee said that the doctors had been detained on suspicion of negligence and of causing death through negligence. It was not immediately possible to reach the doctors or their lawyers.

"The chief physician and the head of the intensive care unit have been detained in the criminal case relating to the deaths of infants in Novokuznetsk," Svetlana Petrenko, the Committee's spokeswoman, said in a statement.

She said the babies had died "as a result of the suspects' improper performance of their official and professional duties in organising and providing medical care".

Video released by investigators showed one man being escorted away in handcuffs by police and a medical worker answering questions from investigators.

The Argumenty i Fakty newspaper reported that the hospital had a poor reputation and that it had received at least five warnings from health authorities in August-November last year.

Professor Pavel Vorobyov, a prominent Russian doctor, questioned why the alarm had not been raised earlier. "With the first death, they (doctors and nurses) should have bust a gut and started doing something... when nine people have died and everyone is silent, something very strange is going on," Argumenty i Fakty quoted him as saying.

Some politicians, commentators and ordinary Russians asked how the country could hope to raise its birth rate - a priority set by President Vladimir Putin - if such tragedies were allowed to happen.