Mother dies at GPHC 9 days after child’s birth

…family calling for answers

By Lakhram Bhagirat

A mother is now calling for justice and an investigation into her daughter’s death after giving birth at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) on December 28, 2018.
Bibi Khan of Vergenoegen, East Bank Essequibo is accusing the doctors at the GPHC of “killing” her eldest daughter, Fariena Mohammed, and offering no plausible explanations for her death. The grief-stricken woman said the 30-year-old Mohammed was pregnant with her second child and on Thursday, December 28, 2018, she went into labour shortly after 13:00h.
She was rushed to GPHC and gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Shahid Ali, shortly after 16:00h.
“She get this baby normal and everything…she was okay but she say that she belly was hurting…On Monday, December 31, she call me and tell me that the baby nah feel well. She said that the baby wasn’t getting to breathe and was getting blue,” Khan related.

The woman related that the doctors informed the family that the baby would have swallowed some of the amniotic fluid hence the reason for his complications. The baby boy was transferred to the Neonatal Unit and immediately began receiving treatment for the infection. Mohammed was discharged but remained at the hospital since her infant was still hospitalised. Since she was in the ward and her baby in another section of the building, it required her walking a few flights of stairs to feed him every two hours.
During one of the feedings, a paediatrician noticed something strange with Mohammed and began probing. According to Khan, her daughter was breathing heavily and having shortness of breath which caught the attention of the paediatrician who asked the woman’s doctors to investigate further. It was from there, however, that the situation went downhill.
“They did an EKG and that come back normal and then they say that they want to do a CT scan and she called me and tell me to bring money,” Khan related.
The grieving mother said that she received the call about the CT scan on the morning of January 05, 2019 and informed her daughter that she would take the money during the lunchtime visit. However, she was told that the doctors said it was urgently needed and that she should visit the hospital as soon as possible with the money for the scan.
Sensing the urgency in her daughter’s voice, Khan rushed down to the GPHC and arrived shortly after 10:00h.
With tears threatening to escape from the wells in her eyes, Khan said she was not prepared for the sight she met when she entered into the ward. Her daughter was being held in a sitting position by the team of doctors with several wires hooked on to her chest and her mouth and nose were covered by an oxygen mask.
The woman painfully related that her daughter did not even bat an eye at her or even speak. She said she started to ask questions, but no one was answering her directly. Instead, she was instructed to go and pay for the CT Scan and that the ambulance would take Mohammed at 11:00h for the procedure at another hospital.
She told this publication that she started to feel uneasy and was asked to wait in the corridor.
After she saw it was past 11:00h and no attempt was made to go for the scan, she started asking more question and was informed that her daughter was too unstable to move.
She said that they stayed at the hospital until 19:00h in hopes that the doctors would tell her something definitive but all she got was a doctor telling them that there is a strong possibility that Mohammed would fall in a coma for three days. Armed with this information the family retreated to their East Bank Essequibo home and at about 22:00h Mohammed’s husband received a call from the hospital asking that they go immediately. The family rushed there but on their way a relative called and said that Mohammed had already died.
“When we reach to Public Hospital they done take off all the machine on her and done put her in a fulling bag (body bag). Tell me what is it? Them kill my child since in the early for them to do all of this? When they took her over to ICU she didn’t been know nothing,” the angry mother said.
Mohammed died shortly after 22:00h on January 05, 2019. The autopsy concluded that she died because of a heart attack. The family is not satisfied and have since indicated that there may be a cover-up since Mohammed was healthy until they started to treat her for the shortness of breath.
The mother of two was buried on January 8 while her newborn son was still in the Neonatal Unit of the hospital. The child has since been released into the custody of his father. The woman also had a five-year-old daughter. They are at the family’s home in Richmond Village, Essequibo Coast.
Mohammed’s mother is calling on the hospital’s medical staff and by extension the administration to provide them with the history of her daughter’s treatment along with the answers to her multiple questions.
“I need justice not only for my daughter but also to make sure that no other mother goes through what I am going through. They need to stop doing this and treat people better. All Public Hospital does do is kill people and that is it.”