Latest update February 10th, 2025 2:25 PM
Young mother blames private hospital for negligence in newborn’s death
Tamera Leslie at the early stage of her pregnancy.
Kaieteur News – A 20-year-old teacher of Bent Street, Wortmanville, is still trying to come to grips with the fact that she lost her first and only child, mere minutes after giving birth on Monday night.
Even though her baby girl was born at six months, Tamera Leslie believed that if the midwife at the private hospital where she gave birth had paid more care and attention, she could have still been holding her child today.
The distressed woman yesterday told Kaieteur News that because of the dismissive treatment she endured in the process of giving birth by the midwife, she is in deep despair. Leslie told this publication that on Monday after seeing blood in her urine, she alerted her mother who then rushed her to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) for medical attention. The young woman said that on arrival, she was told to sit and wait in the Accident and Emergency Unit for her name to call. Leslie said while waiting, it felt as if she was experiencing contractions. With that, she left and went to her mother, who was waiting outside, and asked her to take her to a private hospital. Upon arrival at the private facility, she was asked by a nurse if she was registered at the hospital’s clinic. She recalled telling the nurse no and was then asked to fill out some paper work. Because of the condition she was in, Leslie explained that she could not do that, so instead her mother left and went to handle it.
While in the hospital’s emergency room, the nurses there attended to her and checked her blood pressure and other vitals. From there she left and went to the doctor’s office, where she explained her symptoms. The teacher said because she was in active labour, she was unable to do the tests the Doctor had suggested. Immediately she was taken to another room, where she met the midwife who then checked the baby’s heart rate.
After this, she was told by the midwife that everything was intact and okay, and it was time to deliver the baby. While in the process of the conversation, the young woman claimed, the midwife had asked her how many months the baby was. “I said six months and she just watch at me and said ‘Six months, okay, the baby nah going to live’,” she recounted the midwife telling her. The woman told Kaieteur News that she did not ask her any further questions because she was left confused as to why the baby was not going to live.
After giving birth, the 20-year-old said that the midwife showed her the baby and told her it was a girl. She remembered at that time she saw her baby breathing. Moments after, her baby was placed in a blue blanket, and again Leslie claimed that she saw her baby breathing and was moving. The young woman recalled that she didn’t hear her baby cry or anything of the sort because everything happened so suddenly.
According to Leslie, “She just start to fold the blanket and she put the baby in a corner, then she was like, ‘what am I going to do with it because the hospital don’t have storage here, they don’t keep dead babies here,” she recounted.
The woman young recalled that during that time, the midwife’s phone started to ring. The teacher claimed that the woman left to answer her phone, while she was still in that condition. While in the room, she noted that there was no oxygen machine or even an incubator or anything that could have saved her child’s life.
The grieving woman who is in pain, is calling upon the relative authorities to look into this matter, because up to date she is still at a loss as to what caused the death of her child and is asking for a thorough investigation to be conducted.
Yesterday, this media house made contact with the private hospital twice for a comment, but were futile. Meanwhile, the Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health, Dr. Narine Singh, had informed that no report was made to the Ministry concerning the death of the child, hence no further comment was offered.
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