Three babies at a private postnatal care center in northwestern China have been diagnosed with neonatal sepsis, a toxic condition resulting from the spread of bacteria, local media reported Monday. Another has shown symptoms of pneumonia, meaning that half of the seven families staying at the center now have sick children.

The Niannujiao Aiqin center in Yulin, Shaanxi province, is a private facility for new mothers. According to Chinese tradition, women are expected to spend one to two months recuperating and being cared for in bed after childbirth — a period called yuezi, or “sitting the month.” But because of high demand and a low entry barrier into the industry, the standard of care mothers and their newborns receive can be inconsistent. In fact, one of the few bureaucratic hoops to jump through before opening a yuezi center is simply registering with the State Administration for Industry and Commerce.

The youngest patient at the center, just 10 days old, is reportedly the most severely affected, having developed both sepsis and purulent meningitis, a pus-producing brain infection.

Children who are born with sepsis tend to show symptoms within seven days. The fact that the babies apparently developed symptoms after this period suggests that they acquired the infections from their environment. In China, neonatal sepsis has a mortality rate of 5 to 10 percent. Worldwide, it is among the top six killers of children under age 5, according to the World Health Organization.

The clinic, which opened in March of last year, is reportedly owned by Yulin Guangjitang Pharmaceutical Technology Co. Ltd., one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in Shaanxi. After the babies fell ill at the end of March, health and disease control authorities in Yulin announced they would investigate the matter.

Niannujiao Aiqin declined Sixth Tone’s interview request on Tuesday, but the local media report quotes a manager at the clinic surnamed He as saying, “If the hospital [where the children are now being treated] finds evidence that the infections are our center’s responsibility, then I assure you that we will provide reasonable explanations.”

China has an estimated 4,000-plus yuezi clinics. In September of last year, the country’s standardization administration made strides to regulate the industry by requiring all centers to set up a complaint hotline and provide a guestbook where patients can leave feedback. The initiative further stated that responses to complaints should be given within 24 hours, and that effective measures be taken to address the complaints within five days.

However, state regulations aren’t always well-implemented at the lowest levels of government.

The father of one of the sick newborns in Yulin told local media that several babies would share the same crib without the bedding being changed, and said there were only two scrub-brushes for cleaning the clinic’s many milk bottles. The man, surnamed Feng, further said that families paid the center anywhere from a few thousand yuan to over 10,000 yuan ($1,600) to receive the same services.

“Babies here share a lot of things,” Feng told the reporter.

A new mother surnamed Guo had reportedly spent over 50 days at the center and had been preparing to check out when her own child was diagnosed with sepsis. “They never cleaned the baby’s crib,” she was quoted as saying. “They only came to mop the floor once a day. There was no effort to sanitize. Only after our kids got hospitalized did they start caring about service.”

Poor internal management and external oversight of yuezi clinics have also been problems in the past. In July 2016, six babies at a clinic in Wuhan, Hubei province, had severe diarrhea after catching a rotavirus. And in August 2017, a mother sued a yuezi center in Beijing after her son, too, was diagnosed with sepsis after staying at the clinic.

The four sick children in Shaanxi are currently undergoing treatment at Yulin No. 2 People’s Hospital.

Editor: David Paulk.

(Header image: VCG)