Nineteen-year-old Marina Persaud, who gave birth on Christmas Day at the Georgetown Public Hospital, died of a ruptured intestine, an autopsy report revealed.
The young mother was readmitted to the hospital less than a week after giving birth to a baby girl. She had started fainting and vomiting nonstop after she was discharged from the hospital on Boxing Day.
According to her sister, Nadia Persaud, the post-mortem examination report revealed that she died of a ruptured intestine, even though a doctor, who was monitoring her condition on the day of her death, said she had contracted an infection.
Persaud lived with her husband at Lot 1107 Golden Grove Housing Scheme; they were married for one year and had celebrated their first anniversary on December 28, two days before she died.
“I don’t know what play out with my sister at that hospital,” Nadia Persaud said, adding that it was sad that her niece would grow up without knowing her mother.
She stated that Persaud gave birth to the baby at 3:20 am on Christmas Day and by midday on Boxing Day she was released.
After spending a day with her new family, Persaud started complaining about pains in her stomach and then she began vomiting constantly. “We didn’t take it for nothing because you does get lil pain after you get the baby but when my mother tried strapping her belly, she said no that it pulling her…like something inside pulling,” Nadia Persaud related.
She said her sister became frustrated with the pain but they kept telling her that it was normal to get pain after delivering a baby. “The next day she was fine. She cook and eat with her husband but it was the next day we rush her to the hospital,” she said.
Nadia Persaud said her sister woke up and when she was coming out of the washroom she fainted. When they carried her to the Diamond Hospital, they were told that her pressure was low and they should buy Malta for her. Persaud said the doctors said they would discharge her in the afternoon because her condition was fine.
But later that afternoon, her condition deteriorated and she was transferred immediately to the Georgetown Public Hospital where she was kept in the Accident and Emergency Unit.
Nadia Persaud stated that around 7.30 pm, she went into the unit to check on her sister, who informed her that her back was hurting. “She told me that her back hurting and when I rubbed it she said her belly hurting and I rubbed it too,” she said, adding: “Then she tell me she wasn’t feeling her two legs and when I see her foot it was changing colour and getting blue.”
She said when she felt her sister’s foot, it was cold and she jumped. “Right away I ask her who looking her after and she showed me a man and I call him but all he keep asking is why she didn’t tell the doctor that she wasn’t feeling her two foot,” she said.
Nadia Persaud said she raised her voice and told him that since she walked into the unit no one had come to check on her sister’s condition. “I couldn’t understand why he asking that instead of helping her and see what happening to her.”
She recalled then that her sister called out her name, directing her attention to her hands. She said her sister’s hands were also turning blue and she held on to them. “I start to get more worried and when she said she can’t see clear anymore I started to get scared and the nurse tell her that it was because she didn’t eat any food. But then her tongue started to stretch out and crack and the nurse holler, ‘Oh God! Oh God! She low! She low!’ and he call the doctors.
“Marina start tell me that she feeling like she going and that I must take care of her baby and don’t punish her but I tell her don’t say that…that she should call pon God to help her but she hold on pon the nurse and call my name. And he put her hand on mine,” she said with tears in her eyes.
Nadia Persaud said the doctor told her that her sister contracted an infection and that had caused her death. “Now they saying that her intestine burst mek she die. I don’t believe that because they tell me one thing before.”
Other relatives said the hospital was at fault because of their slow response to helping her. They said she should have been checked and treated immediately instead of being placed on a bed and left alone.
In a press statement on New Year’s Eve the hospital extended condolences to the bereaved family.
Marina Persaud will be buried today.
