A couple’s excitement and happiness of starting the new year with their new bundle of joy were shattered on Saturday when the baby was delivered stillborn at the San Fernando General Hospital.
Amit Gannah, 29, a load attendant, is now demanding an investigation as he blames his baby’s death on negligence by hospital staff.
“You done have everything prepared for when that baby reach and when that baby reach so far, to no life anymore. To hold a dead baby instead of a living baby is not a nice feeling, it hurts a lot,” said Gannah at his South Oropouche home yesterday.
Showing the clothes that he would never get to dress his baby in, Gannah said his common-law-wife Venezuelan migrant Difranceis Robles, 22, has been crying constantly. She is still being treated at the hospital after heavy blood loss.
Gannah believes that his baby, whom he named Yeximar Kimberly Gannah, was stillborn because the doctors took too long to do the caesarean section.
He recalled that last May when Robles found out she was pregnant she joined the maternity clinic. He said his wife had no complications and the baby was healthy. Robles had two previous C-sections from a previous relationship and the doctors told her she would have to do another one.
“She went on the 14 of December they stated it in the report and the file that she have to do an immediate caesarean anytime she get pain or contractions.”
He said last Tuesday while he was at work she began experiencing pain and the ambulance took her to the hospital. At the hospital, he said, they prepped her for surgery, but the caesarean was not done. “They end up warding her to the antenatal ward.” He said she was given injections for the pain and discharged the following day with an admission slip to returnto the ward on January 7. The c-section was scheduled for January 8.
But, on Saturday around 1 am she started experiencing severe pain and they called the ambulance. He said on the way to the hospital, the baby was moving.
“We reach there around 1.30 in the morning. She was done bleeding everything for the baby to be born. They came about half-past two am and said they were not getting any heartbeat on the baby. They wanted to keep she an hour again to see if she would do a natural birth.”
He said even though he explained to them that she was supposed to have an immediate caesarian, he said they still did not do it.
Four hours later, they took her into the theatre.
Gannah was told that the procedure would take about two hours. “Half-past ten they took her out of the operating theatre and took her to the ward. When they bring the baby, the baby was already dead.” When his wife asked him about their baby, he could not answer her.
“All she saw was tears running from my eyes and she done know something was wrong and when she got her baby she started crying. I had to let the nurse remove the baby in order to calm her down.”
While on the ward, Gannah claimed he saw other women being neglected by the staff.
Gannah said he did not file a complaint with the hospital because he did not know how it had to be done. But he wants justice for their loss.
“The length of time they leave the baby in her to cut her she could ah also be dead and then it would ah be more pressure.”
Contacted for a comment, the South West Regional Health Authority advised that the couple makes a formal complaint, following which an investigation would be launched.