Kevon Felmine

Chair­man of the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe has as­sured an in­ves­ti­ga­tion will be launched in­to the death on Mon­day of Sher­ry-Ann Jones' ba­by at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal. Jones, 29, and her hus­band, Nasim Haynes, are blam­ing neg­li­gence for the death of their ba­by daugh­ter who died in the womb. Haynes said: "My wife had clin­ic around 8.30 am on Mon­day and she start­ed to get labour pains so we went to the hos­pi­tal and she was ward­ed. "When she re­moved her ma­ter­ni­ty pad she saw a green colour. When we asked the doc­tor about it he told us it was nor­mal.

"She asked the nurse and the nurse agreed with the doc­tor. At noon she checked again and it was yel­low and the nurs­es said that too was nor­mal." Haynes said when doc­tors checked the ba­by's heart­beat, it was nor­mal. How­ev­er, he added, around 9 o'clock that night they could not de­tect a heart­beat. Ac­cord­ing to Haynes, an ul­tra sound was con­duct­ed and doc­tors in­formed them the child had died. He said Jones was left un­at­tend­ed for hours and had to wait un­til 3 pm on Tues­day to be tak­en to the the­atre for surgery. "My wife told me when the ba­by came out, it was cov­ered in the same green sub­stance she se­cret­ed on the pad, he said."

A doc­tor told him the green dis­charge meant the child was in dis­tress, he added. Asked if he in­tend­ed to take le­gal ac­tion, Haynes said there was noth­ing to com­pen­sate for the loss of his child. "I have no mon­ey to hire a big lawyer and they might just take a big pay-off and leave," he said. Haynes said al­though he was feel­ing stressed out, he had to be strong for his wife and their one-year-old daugh­ter, Nasimah. Com­ment­ing on the ba­by's death, for­mer head of Ob­stet­rics and Gy­nae­col­o­gy at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, Dr Je­han Ali, said the dis­charge of green mat­ter dur­ing preg­nan­cy was an in­di­ca­tion of foetal dis­tress.

He added: "Green­ish flu­id dur­ing labour is a bad sign. From what I un­der­stood, the pa­tient had a his­to­ry of rup­tured mem­branes. "If it was con­firmed that the ba­by was in dis­tress, she should have been close­ly mon­i­tored, with con­tin­u­ous foetal mon­i­tor­ing." Ali said the green­ish sub­stance was found when the child se­cretes fae­ces in­to the womb. He said more could have been done to save the ba­by's life. That oc­cur­rence, he said, was clas­si­fied as a fresh still­birth in which the ba­by dies close to, or dur­ing labour.