Baby suffers head injury after fall in Maternity ward

Nov 06, 2015 News

– nurse sent on leave, Health Minister orders probe
By Romila Boodram

The baby’s parents at the hospital yesterday

Minister of Public Health Dr. George Norton has ordered an investigation to ascertain how a baby boy ended up with head injuries on Tuesday in the Georgetown Public Hospital’s Maternity Ward.
There are reports that a nurse dropped the newborn, minutes after his mother delivered him, while another report suggests that the baby fell off a warming bed.
Kaieteur News understands that a CT-scan revealed bleeding in the child’s brain.
The baby’s parents, Pholmattie Ramjattan and Akeem Balgobin, told Kaieteur News that hospital authorities have informed them that the newborn will have to undergo surgery to stop the bleeding.
However, the parents have been warned that their child has a 50/50 chance of survival. The baby is in the hospital’s Neonatal-Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
The Minister of Public Health, Dr. George Norton yesterday said that the baby fell from the warming bed in the Maternity Ward.
He explained that immediately after the incident was reported to him, he ordered an investigation which included the nurse in question, the ward supervisor, the doctors and all the nurses who were on duty. He said too that he ordered that the nurse be sent on leave to facilitate the investigation.
According to the Public Health Minister, if the investigation reveals that the newborn baby fell as a result of negligence, action will be taken against the people involved.
The mother, Pholmattie Ramjattan, told reporters that she went to the GPHC on Tuesday and by 07:30 hrs she had already delivered her baby.
“After I delivered, I was on the bed and the nurse who was cleaning me left saying that she going home. When she left I had to leave and go outside because they needed the bed to deliver another patient,” Ramjattan said.
She added that while waiting outside the delivery room, a male doctor approached and told her that one of the nurses had caused her baby to fall.
“When he said that, I went in to see and I see they had my baby wrapped and he was in a corner so I asked them why my baby not wearing clothes and they said that they have to take him to do a scan to see if any bones break because he get a hard fall.”
According to Ms. Ramjattan, she continued to try to find out what could have happened to her baby, but only got conflicting responses.
“One time I heard that the baby slipped out of the nurse’s hand while she was bathing him and another time I heard that the baby fell from the cot; then I am hearing, instead of putting the baby on the cot, the nurse dropped him,” the devastated mother said.
According to Mrs. Ramjattan, the nurse also told her that she had put the newborn on the cot and the child rolled off.
“How can a newborn baby roll off anything?” the mother questioned.
“Up to now my baby’s head is still swollen and he is attached to a set of wires in the NICU.” The newborn’s father, Akeem Balgobin, said what had happened to his son was “total negligence.”
He accused the staffers at the GPHC’s Maternity Ward of trying to “cover-up”the incident.
It is unclear how long the investigation will take.