The mothers of the 26-year-old woman who lost her life after delivering through caesarean-section at the New Amsterdam Hospital and a pregnant teenager who died two days before want the persons responsible for their deaths to be disciplined.
In separate interviews with this newspaper both women – Minett Chinamootoo of Number 35 Village, Corentyne and Serojanie Sammy of Mount Sinai, New Amsterdam – maintained that both deaths could have been avoided if more interest was taken.
They were also anxious to know the findings of an investigation that Minister of Health Dr Leslie Ramsammy had ordered. Contacted, the minister told Stabroek News that he had not yet received a copy of the report from the Chief Medical Officer.
Further, both women called for better systems to be put in place to prevent more mothers from losing their lives. They felt that the hospital staff lacked professionalism.
Serojanie Sammy, 38, told this newspaper that her daughter, Nadira Sammy was admitted to the maternity ward at the hospital on September 16 and was diagnosed with high blood pressure.
She said her daughter who was residing with her husband at Number 69 Village after getting married last December, had visited the Skeldon Hospital clinic earlier that day where the first diagnosis was made.
After learning from her mother-in-law around 1 pm that she was taken to the New Amsterdam Hospital, she said, she immediately went over to see her; all along her daughter was experiencing intense pain.
She left later that evening after promising her daughter that she would return the following morning with breakfast.
When she got there after 6 am Nadira was not in the ward but a pair of slippers belonging to her was in the middle of the room and she immediately became concerned.
She told this newspaper, “me pick up the slippers and look at it and me dun know that something wrong.” At that stage she saw a nurse who told her to “hold on because the head nurse want talk to me.”
The nurse-in-charge told her that Nadira began experiencing pain around 8:30 pm and she developed a “blowing” and could not breathe properly.
She also related that they were “looking after she fuh move she to Georgetown Hospital” but that she died during the process.
The nurse said too that they kept calling for the doctor but did not get through until around 10:30 pm. The doctor also told her that if the call was made earlier he would have been able “to do something better.”
The distressed Sammy, 38, who has six other children, ages, 18, 12, 11, 8, 6 and 5 years old told Stabroek News, “Me aint know who is at fault but me lose me big, big daughter.”
She stressed too that “she done dead and me can’t do anything about it but me glad if them can look into it. Me punish to mind me children and nothing na do them… If every time they gon take life like that wha gon happen?”
She said although the nurses claimed that the teen’s blood pressure was high they just gave her a tablet and placed her in the ward.
She is questioning this move because “I know that when yuh pressure high you have to go in a dark room and they gon give you saline. Me pressure was high when ah had me last daughter and dat is how dem look after me,” the woman pointed out.
She even said that other patients later told her that her daughter was screaming out in pain and the nurses told her to “shut up, yuh time ain’t reach yet.”
She also posited that “they know me daughter blood pressure high and before they holler on she like that they shoulda take she to the theatre for the caesarean.”
Meanwhile, Chinamootoo said she informed the nurses that her daughter, Rebekha Chinamootoo of Number 36 Village would have to deliver her baby via c-section since her first child, a five-year-old girl, was also delivered in that manner.
The woman who insisted that the hospital staff delayed performing the c-section said the results of a post-mortem examination confirmed that she bled to death.
Rebekha was taken to the hospital on Friday, September 17 and although she was experiencing severe pain she was not taken into the theatre until around 6:30 pm the following day.After she developed complications she was rushed to the Georgetown Public Hospital, bleeding heavily and was pronounced dead at that institution.
“People tell we that she was bleeding bad that when they lift she from the ambulance she been bleeding and bleeding,” a relative had told this newspaper.
The relative had said too that, “Dem tell she how she gat passage and she could get the baby the normal way. But dem shoulda know is c-section because she chart say so and she use to go clinic.”
Chinamootoo said too that they kept Rebekha in the labour room and “she just waiting there and was getting plenty pain but she was not getting the passage to get the baby. “Dey punish me daughter… Before dey tek she in the theatre she hold onto me and was crying really bad.” Eventually, she recalled, a young surgeon came and took her to the theatre. The grieving mother lamented too that, “If no doctor was around [earlier] they shoulda give me me daughter to take to a private hospital.”After waiting for about 45 minutes, she said, she went to check and a nurse told her that the surgery was over and brought out a healthy baby boy to show her. She peered into the room and saw that her daughter had not regained consciousness.
The nurses told her and other relatives to go home and return the next morning. At around midnight her phone rang and she became scared. It was a nurse from the New Amsterdam Hospital informing them that Rebekha was transferred to the Georgetown Hospital.
About two hours later, relatives called the hospital but officials there informed them that they could not give any information.
Early the next morning, she said, they travelled to Georgetown and kept looking for Rebekha in the wards “not knowing that she done dead and dey in the mortuary.”
After speaking to someone, Chinamootoo’s husband returned in tears and she realized that her daughter was dead and started to scream.
What was worse for the family she said, is that they were not allowed to witness the post-mortem examination.
In the meantime the family is taking a lawyer to follow-up the matter regarding her daughter’s death.
