Those maternal deaths

Oct 25, 2012 Editorial

Childbirth was always seen as one of the most natural things in the world. It is the key to the continuation of human existence. In recent times Guyana has been recording unusually high numbers of maternal deaths. So disturbing was this fact that the government launched an investigation.
At the time most of the deaths were being recorded at Skeldon and at Linden. And these were happening at a time when the government was making a loud boast of the numbers of doctors returning from Cuba to boost the functioning of the medical services in Guyana.
There was a promise that the reports from the first investigations would be made public and that action would be taken if it were discovered that there was a case of gross negligence. This was all well and good but it turned out that the hospitals were not keeping records of what was transpiring within their walls.
In every other case of people entering hospitals there are copious records. The various vital signs are recorded and there is a history of the medications issued. This would allow for anyone paying a repeat visit to a hospital to be treated by any doctor. In this day of computerization all the records are stored and can be retrieved at the drop of a hat.
A woman going to a clinic would have her records properly stored for use at any time. However, in every case when a death was recorded in Guyana it was as if the patient was being seen for the first time.
The investigation launched by the government in the wake of the spike in maternal deaths found that there was poor record keeping. There was precious little on any of the mothers who died.
The nation expected fireworks for this serious lapse in the health system. Instead there was deafening silence. More than a year has elapsed and we are still to be provided with information on these women’s death. No one has been disciplined and we are nowhere closer to finding out whether the situation has changed and whether there is record keeping.
Last week another young mother died. The post mortem revealed that she bled to death. Surely there must have been something to suggest that there could have been complications.
We understand that she delivered by Caesarean section. That tells us that there was some surgical intervention. We are left to conclude that the doctor who performed the surgery did something to cause the woman to bleed incessantly.
Some time back, a medical doctor said that he could not help but notice that people still die of injuries to their spleen. This doctor said that such should no longer be the case, since medicine had advanced to the point where such injuries are easily corrected.
That would suggest that the local doctors are not as qualified as they should be.
There is more. There have been complaints from the nurses and one would find this really shocking, given that most of the nurses are women.
The view is that they would be overly sympathetic to the woes of another woman. Instead, they are said to be the most unsympathetic. In fact, in some of the cases of maternal deaths, nurses were accused of informing the mother that she was not ready to deliver.
We notice that Trinidad is also reporting a spike in maternal deaths. We are certain that the root causes may be different. According to reports, many of the fatalities in Trinidad are women who delayed the onset of their childbearing.
The doctors are convinced that the risk increases with the age of the woman.
However, many of the women who died in Guyana were young so they were outside the scope of the Trinidad experience. And many of them were attending clinic because these days pregnant women tend to be more conscious of the need for regular medical checks.
And as for the promised reports on the maternal deaths, these are still to be forthcoming. It is as if the government has resigned itself to substandard practices in the clinics and hospitals.

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Those maternal deaths

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