Why the Newborn Tragedy in Novokuznetsk Couldn’t Be Prevented
Understanding the Tragedy
The tragic loss of nine newborns at Maternity Hospital No. 1 in Novokuznetsk has become one of the most discussed and painful topics of early 2026. Social media and Telegram channels have exploded with comments, with women sharing personal stories and recalling not just medical nuances, but the attitude of the staff: rudeness, shouting, humiliation, and a sense of complete helplessness.
Investigations and Initial Findings
The Investigative Committee has initiated two criminal cases under articles on negligence and causing death by negligence. The chief physician, Vitaly Kheraskov, has been suspended from his duties, and inspections by regional and federal health ministries have begun. Preliminary findings suggest that the main cause of the children’s deaths was intrauterine infection and extremely low birth weight. Several babies remain in intensive care, with doctors continuing to fight for their lives.
Expert Insights
To understand what might have happened and where the line between medical tragedy and systemic errors lies, we turned to Dr. Lyubov Vladimirovna Yerofeeva, an obstetrician-gynecologist, public health specialist, and WHO expert. According to Yerofeeva, intrauterine infection is a long process that begins well before birth and unfortunately cannot be prevented at the last stage.
Intrauterine Infections
“Intrauterine infection is a long process. It doesn’t come from the staff but from home, from friends, from the environment. It’s the cold season, and mothers are getting sick en masse. First, the woman herself gets infected, then bacteria, viruses, or fungi appear in her blood, and only then does the infection reach the embryo or fetus. This is how children with intrauterine infections are born,” explains the doctor in an interview with Woman.ru.
Systemic Issues
However, as Yerofeeva notes, the problem is not limited to infections alone. She refers to birth statistics provided by the regional Health Ministry: out of 236 women in labor from early December 2025 to mid-January 2026, 44 were in serious condition, and the vast majority of children were born prematurely. This, she says, is a serious warning sign indicating a deeper problem. The expert emphasizes that we are talking about low-weight and premature babies.
Patient Responsibility
“With prematurity, the presence of intrauterine infection always exacerbates the situation. Some children had immunodeficiency, which indicates problems during pregnancy. Questions arise: Did the woman visit the prenatal clinic, follow the doctor’s recommendations, or live as if pregnancy should not affect anything? That’s not how it works,” notes the specialist.
Shared Responsibility
The doctor sympathizes with all the affected families and does not absolve the medical workers who managed the pregnancies and cared for the children after birth of responsibility. However, in her opinion, it is incorrect to place all the blame solely on the doctors—the tragedy almost always results from a chain of factors involving both the healthcare system and the patients themselves.
Psychological Support
Yerofeeva separately draws attention to the wave of comments on social networks discussing how the births took place. The specialist insists that psychological control over the work of obstetricians and doctors during childbirth should be strengthened: “You cannot make conclusions based solely on emotions. Someone might have thought that the midwife shouted. But midwives are not from the moon. They are people who bear enormous physical and moral burdens and are responsible for at least two lives. Yes, they burn out, and sometimes this manifests as rudeness or cynicism. That is why there should be psychologists in maternity hospitals to help staff cope with burnout. But our psychologists are mainly focused on prenatal clinics to dissuade women from abortions. Other important areas remain without support.”
Perinatal Losses
Speaking about what happened, the specialist calls it perinatal losses—a situation where women lose their desired children. However, the key question, in her opinion, is not only about the births themselves but why so many infants were born prematurely.
Systemic Errors
“Why were 44 children born prematurely? This already looks like a systemic error, an accumulated problem that went unnoticed for a long time. This is not a coincidence. The commission will definitely figure it out: study the documents, interview the doctors, and restore the chain of events,” emphasizes the specialist.
Public Reaction and Media Responsibility
The doctor also urges journalists and society to be more careful with creating panic. According to her, the level of anxiety among women is extremely high, leading to dangerous decisions—refusing medical observation and choosing dubious alternative birth methods. Lyubov Vladimirovna emphasizes that if a woman visited a doctor only 2-3 times during her pregnancy instead of the recommended 10-12 times, the responsibility cannot be entirely placed on the medics: it is a conscious choice of the patient herself, which can have tragic consequences.
Medical Literacy
“It doesn’t work like that. We say from government tribunes: give birth, we will support you. But at the same time, the population is medically illiterate, and hence such losses.”
Previous Incidents
The specialist also commented on another resonant episode related to the same medical institution. Maternity Hospital No. 1 of the Novokuznetsk Regional Clinical Hospital was already at the center of a public scandal just a few months before the tragedy with the nine infants. In the fall, a video went viral on social networks in which a girl talked about the difficult birth of her sister. According to her, the contractions of the pregnant woman began at the 21st week, after which the woman was taken by ambulance to the perinatal center and immediately sent to the delivery room. According to the author of the video, the behavior of the medics was accompanied by rudeness and harsh medical manipulations. She said that the future mother was caused severe pain during examinations, and her screams were met with aggression. According to the girl, during the pushing, the baby was still showing signs of life, but the birth process ended tragically.
Public Outcry
At the same time, the story included a statement about a serious injury to the infant, which caused the greatest public resonance. What exactly was meant by the phrase about the “torn-off arm” was never fully clarified. As reported by “KP”, the experts interviewed suggested that it could have been about multiple fractures, which are theoretically possible in extremely difficult premature births and high fragility of fetal tissues.
Family Claims
The woman’s relatives claimed that the baby’s body was sent for examination, and the family intended to contact law enforcement agencies. The relatives of the deceased infant insisted that premature birth at such a term could have been tried to stop, and they associated the death of the child with unprofessional actions of the medical staff.
Expert Response
Commenting on this story for Woman.ru, Yerofeeva emphasized that such accusations are often based on emotions rather than medical facts.
Medical Facts vs. Emotions
“People write: the doctors pulled the baby and tore off the arm. I sincerely sympathize with the family. But it doesn’t happen like that—the baby cannot be physically ‘pulled out’; birth occurs only through the work of the body. The woman’s sister reasons that the birth should have been stopped. Where does such knowledge come from? Birth is an unstoppable process. You can put a woman into a medically induced sleep if she is very exhausted, but the birth continues, and doctors only observe this process,” explained the expert.
Legal Actions
On the eve, it became known about the detention of the chief physician of City Hospital No. 1, Vitaly Kheraskov, as well as the head of the newborn intensive care unit. The investigation charged them under articles on negligence and causing death by negligence. The maximum punishment is up to seven years in prison. Currently, it is being established what managerial decisions and systemic failures could have led to the tragedy that shook not only Novokuznetsk but the entire country.
