In a horrifying incident, an elderly man in eastern China has allegedly killed his grandson by injecting him with a lethal chemical, three days after the child was born with a cleft lip.
The boy, who was born on July 14, died at a hospital in Shanghai's Chongming county on July 17 after being injected with potassium chloride, a prescription drug used with saline in transfusions which could stop the heart when injected directly into the body, state-run Global Times reported.
The elderly man and a doctor, suspected of providing the man with the drug, have been arrested. "The two were arrested for murder," said an official from security bureau in Chongming but refused to provide details.
The elderly man admitted he got the potassium chloride from a doctor surnamed Zhou who taught him how to use it before injecting the medicine on the baby's head. The hospital's deputy director, Ji Hui, confirmed that doctors discovered the baby had a cleft lip during an examination in July, but it was too late to induce labour.
Doctors told the family that cleft lips are curable. A cleft lip is a congenital split in the upper lip with a mortality rate of 0.16 per cent to 0.1 per cent. Every year, 25,000 babies are born with a cleft lip and palate in China.
Wang Guomin, a doctor in Shanghai, said every year his hospital operates 2,000 such cases and the procedure has become quite mature. Each operation costs around 10,000 yuan (USD 1,610).
Several non-governmental organisations in China also offer help cure babies born with a cleft clip.
