Prominent doctors arrested after the death of 9 newborns in a hospital in Russia:

Russian police have arrested the chief doctor and the acting head of intensive care at a Siberian hospital where nine babies died this month, prosecutors said Wednesday.

The case, which has highlighted chronic staff shortages and funding gaps in the country’s medical system, has sparked anger and bewilderment among Russian politicians and online commentators.

Prosecutors have accused the couple of negligence and causing death by negligence, the Russian Investigative Committee said in a statement.

The exact causes of deaths at Novokuznetsk maternity hospital number 1 are not yet known. But regional health authorities said all the babies suffered from a range of illnesses and died during childbirth or pregnancy.

The local Health Ministry said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies that 234 children were born at the hospital between December 1 and January 11, and 17 babies were considered to be in serious condition in the hospital’s intensive care unit.

“Of the 17 babies in critical condition, 16 of them were premature, including those with extremely low birth weight. All 17 had a severe intrauterine infection,” the Health Ministry statement said. “Unfortunately, nine children did not survive.”

The Reuters news agency, citing the newspaper Argumenty i Fakty, reported that the hospital received at least five warnings from health authorities between August and November last year.

Pavel Vorobyov, a Russian doctor, questioned why action was not taken sooner, Reuters reported.

“With the first death, they (the doctors and nurses) should have snapped and started doing something… when nine people have died and everyone is silent, something very strange is happening,” Argumenty i Fakty quoted him as saying.

The hospital announced Tuesday that it had stopped accepting patients due to a high rate of respiratory infections.

“Between January 4 and 12, 2026, nine newborns died in Novokuznetsk Maternity Hospital No. 1 as a result of the suspects’ poor performance of their official and professional medical duties,” Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement.

A forensic investigation into each baby’s death is underway, he added.

The Russian tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda reported Tuesday that the hospital was missing dozens of employees, although the hospital has denied this.

The speaker of the upper house of the Russian parliament called the incident a tragedy.

“This must never be repeated,” Valentina Matvienko said in a statement.

The governor of the Kuzbass region, of which Novokuznetsk is a part, announced on Tuesday that he had ordered an inspection of all maternity and prenatal hospitals in the region.

And pro-Kremlin lawmaker Yana Lantratova said on Telegram: “In times of demographic crisis, allowing several babies to die in a maternity hospital in such a short period is a crime against the country.”

The other maternity hospital in Novokuznetsk, a city of about half a million people in southern Siberia, remains open, the region’s Health Ministry said.