Many dead babies at GPHC’s morgue are unclaimed

Many dead babies at GPHC’s morgue are unclaimed – Hospital

May 08, 2015 News

The startling number of dead babies stored at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation’s (GPHC) morgue has been linked to relatives failing to retrieve the remains or opting to do so at a late date.

Father of the dead baby Roger Smith

But according to Government Pathologist, Dr Nehaul Singh, while there is currently a high number of babies at the hospital; the situation is not one that developed overnight. “People are always claiming that they are coming for it (dead babies) and the hospital cannot bury the body if they (say) they are coming for it,” asserted Dr Singh.
This state of affairs was also confirmed by Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Michael Khan, who reiterated that the hospital has for some time been dealing with the overcrowding situation, since some families have not been claiming remains.
This publication first highlighted the overcrowding state of affairs at the GPHC’s morgue in its Thursday’s Edition.
According to Roger Smith, a father who claimed that his dead baby was misplaced in the morgue, he visited the public hospital on Wednesday to retrieve the body of his child but workers there were unable to honour his request.
But according to Dr Singh, although the morgue workers had stopped off to attend to a body that is involved in an ongoing police matter, they however eventually located the man’s child.
According to Smith, his eight day- old -son was born at the West Demerara Regional Hospital but two days later he was transferred to the Georgetown Hospital. The child, the man informed, was diagnosed with jaundice.
Smith related that his baby was administered what he believes was antibiotics “or something like that” but based on his observation his child’s condition got worse. “He was placed on oxygen then he was placed on life support, eventually he succumbed,” said Smith. He is suspicious about his child’s demise. “This thing with jaundice and the baby dying is kinda weird,” he said.
The man related that while at the hospital’s morgue “I see like four to five drawers with babies, like 20 babies in a drawer…all just thrown in like that, like pieces of meat, no tags, no nothing, no records properly.”
“They keep pulling out baby after baby looking for (the baby’s) sex and I see a whole set of babies wrapped up with no tag just tossed and thrown in,” added Smith.
According to him, he waited for two and a half hours while morgue workers searched but failed to locate his dead child. “I don’t know what’s going on; these people are sick,” asserted Smith as he recalled how the morgue workers stopped off searching for his son to attend to the parents of at least two other dead babies but were also unable to locate those.
Other parents at the morgue on Wednesday were too emotional to share their concerns.
“They are not finding babies, right now is just adults (bodies) they finding,” observed Smith who added, that the explanation given by the morgue workers for their inability to locate the remains of the babies is that “the man who is supposed to know is not around.”
However, the hospital in a statement issued yesterday expressed dissatisfaction with the article published by this newspaper and even labeled it as “deliberately misleading.”
But the hospital’s statement reflected a clear lack of communication between the Public Relations Department, and that of the office of the CEO as this publication had made contact with Mr. Khan who acknowledged the state of affairs but was not in a position on Wednesday to give a formal response.
Although the hospital’s Public Relations Department sought to emphasise that Smith’s baby was located, no effort was made to admit that it was after a few hours. The hospital also sought to label as “untrue” claims that dead babies in the morgue are untagged pointing out that “bodies are always tagged so deceased persons can be easily identified.”
It was underscored too that “currently there are a number of dead babies at the hospital morgue; as families sometimes refuse to collect the bodies. In these instances, the hospital cannot bury the bodies until a certain amount of time has elapsed and it is determined that the families will not take on burial responsibilities. “This is since burying someone whose family turns up to uplift their body can put the hospital in serious hot water,” added the statement.
The hospital has claimed too, that thus far for the year it has facilitated 17 burials.