Another mother dies after childbirth

A 21-year-old mother of No. 60 Village, Corentyne died early yesterday morning at the New Amsterdam Hospital (NAH) after delivering her second child; a healthy baby girl at the Skeldon Hospital.

The woman, Yogeeta Bishram was admitted to the Skeldon Hospital around
9 pm on Tuesday and her husband, Chandradat Gobin told Stabroek News yesterday that when he left everything was fine with her.

A relative said that around 3 am yesterday the woman called home and while crying said she was experiencing “hot pain. We tell she don’t take worries; we gon come there later to see you.”

An official from the NAH told this newspaper that the matter would be investigated.

Yogeeta Bishram

Relatives later learnt from persons that she kept hollering in the pain and that after delivering the baby “she afterbirth left in her.
We hear that them put she naked in the ambulance and them tek a sheet and just throw it on she.”

Her mother-in-law, Pramela Gobin told this newspaper that she tried to call her daughter-in-law around 4:30 am but the phone rang out.
Just after 5 am she was out on the road awaiting transportation to go to the Skeldon Hospital when an ambulance passed her.

She suspected that her daughter-in-law was being transferred to the NAH but since she did not receive a phone call to that effect she still decided to proceed to the Skeldon Hospital.

When she got there around 6 am she learnt that Yogeeta had been transferred after developing complications.
She enquired why they did not call the family and they informed her that one of the woman’s friends was there at the time and knew that she was being transferred.
However, the woman’s husband doubted that, saying it was just an excuse to cover up their inefficiency and that if any friend was there, the friend would have informed them.

On her way to the NAH Pramela picked up Chandradat and they headed to the NAH, hoping and praying that Yogeeta was alright.
When they got there they enquired where the woman was and were told that she was in the labour room.

But before they could have gone into the labour, a nurse pulled them back and told them to sit on the bench. The nurse then informed them that “she did not make it – she was having too much pain and that she bleed a lot.”

Yogeeta’s husband, Chandradat Gobin and her mother-in-law Pramela, in tears outside the New Amsterdam Hospital mortuary yesterday.

Weeping constantly as he and his mother sat outside the NAH mortuary, Chandradat said the hospital could have contacted him about his wife’s condition.
“They had my telephone number. All they coulda do was call me or even pick me up with the ambulance when they passed – at least I woulda get to see me wife alive…” he lamented. The couple also have a two-year-old daughter – Diane.

He said his father died seven months ago and Yogeeta lost her mother two months before that while her father passed away since she was a young girl.
Last weekend 28-year-old Esther Dwarka-Bowlin of No. 64 Village, Corentyne died after giving birth to a healthy baby boy at the Skeldon Hospital.
Results of a post-mortem examination (PME) performed on the body of proved that she died as a result of internal bleeding.

Esther, the acting Head-mistress of the Princetown Nursery School in Corriver-ton was taken to the hospital around 8:30 pm on Friday after she started experiencing labour pain. (See other story on page 12.)

Reports are that she told a nurse on duty that she was ready to deliver and was told to “go and sleep; you too disgusting.”
Relatives suspected that she died long before the 6 am visit on Saturday because she had already “turned blue,” but said the hospital had not informed them.
In mid-September, two others died in similar manner in Berbice.

Rebekha Chinamootoo, 26, of No. 36 Village, Corentyne died in September after giving birth to a healthy baby boy by c-section at the NAH.
A teenager, Nadira Sammy (16 years) of No. 69 Village who was diagnosed with high blood pressure lost her life at the NA Hospital before giving birth.
When her mother, Serojanie Sammy, 38, turned up for the 6 am visit the next day 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.

Over two months after, a 14-year-old, Savitri Debarros of No. 60 Village, Corentyne died at the Skeldon Hospital after she was admitted there for a ‘blowing.’
Her father, Edwin Debarros charged that she died as a result of being given the wrong treatment and that no one at the institution is giving him an explanation about his child’s death.