Health and Family Welfare Minister Ampareen Lyngdoh today refuted the allegation that staff at Nongpoh Civil Hospital had been in some way negligent, which resulted in a pregnant woman delivering her baby in a hospital toilet. The baby subsequently died.
The claims were first brought by the pressure group HITO and were subsequently published by the media, including national outlets. However, today the minister stated that the media had failed to verify the information or gather the full facts.
Lyngdoh informed that the woman, 19 weeks pregnant, from Umden had been experiencing severe cramps, which led her to seek medical treatment at her local primary health centre before being referred to Nongpoh, where Lyngdoh said she was immediately attended to by the doctors on duty at 3am.
At some point she needed to use the toilet and while there she apparently had a sudden cramp, which resulted in the abortion of the foetus that was 19 weeks old.
“It’s not as if the patient was not receiving the necessary attention and treatment. This 19-week-old foetus, it would have been difficult to make the foetus survive. I can understand the pain that the family is going through. I understand the feeling of loss. I send my condolences to this family, but clearly there was no malpractice, there was no ignorance of leaving this patient outside of medical care,” stated the minister.
Although the department is sure the doctors at the hospital did their duty, an inquiry is being made into whether an ambulance was available to the woman and if not why. The results of this inquiry will be presented by Lyngdoh on Thursday.
The way the news was carried by certain media, Lyngdoh said, made it sound like a full term baby had been born in a toilet and died from negligence.
The Health Department only yesterday complained about the way another alleged case of medical negligence had been reported by the local press.
This case concerned an allegation that a doctor had left behind a piece of bandage in a woman’s abdomen during a caesarean delivery. The department is still probing the matter but yesterday it said that prima facie it appears that the Jengjal Subdivision Hospital had saved the life of the woman rather than putting her in danger.
