Collector M.V. Reddy on Sunday ordered a detailed inquiry into the shocking incident of a newborn baby boy with extremely low weight being wrongly pronounced dead allegedly by the staff at Government Area Hospital in Bhadrachalam on Saturday.
The incident sparked a furore in the hospital, the major State-run health facility in Telangana’s tribal heartland. Sources said that Sunitha, 22, from Andhra Pradesh’s Chintoor mandal, gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, in the hospital on Saturday. Her husband Ravindra claimed that both the babies were declared stillborn allegedly by the hospital staff soon after their birth.
He created a flutter by alleging that the hospital staff wrongly declared his newborn baby boy dead and claimed that he found one of the twins wrapped in a polythene bag alive an hour later. The hospital authorities vehemently denied the charges made against the hospital staff and termed the allegations as “totally false.”
In a statement issued on Saturday night, District Coordinator for Hospital Services (DC&HS) Dr G Ramesh said that Sunitha with twin gestation with 26 weeks was admitted to the hospital with pain in abdomen at 10.50 p.m. on Friday.
After ultrasound evaluation, the condition of bad prognosis of both foetuses was explained to the attendants of the pregnant woman. Subsequently labour augmented with the consent of her attendants and the woman delivered a dead foetus at 8.10 a.m. and the second live baby of extreme low birth weight (500 grams) at 8.20 a.m. on Saturday.
The doctors apprised the patient’s attendants about the birth asphyxia condition of the pre-term baby boy and referred the baby to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).
However, the attendants had taken the baby boy to a private hospital without informing the doctors and brought the baby back to the labour room at 11 a.m. on Saturday. The baby was admitted to the NICU five minutes later, the statement added.
Meanwhile, Collector M.V. Reddy has entrusted the task of conducting a detailed inquiry into the incident to Kothagudem Revenue Divisional Officer (EDO) Swarnalatha and instructed her to submit a comprehensive report at the earliest. According to sources, the pre-term baby boy of Sunitha was rushed to the MGM Hospital in Warangal late on Saturday night for advanced neonatal care to save the baby.