The family of Evita Singh, the 34-year-old mother who died along with her unborn baby at the George-town Public Hospital (GPH) after doctors induc-ed labour, are demanding that the doctors and nurses resign.
Singh, a mother of two, died at the hospital on September 6. She was taken there after she started showing signs of chikungunya and was treated for the fever. During that time, doctors decided to induce labour, using Cytotec tablets.
Relatives accused the doctors and nurses of inserting six of the pills over a two-day period to induce labour. They had also blamed hospital officials for negligence because Singh was forced to wait a while before she could be operated on, even though she was bleeding profusely.
Singh’s father, Dennis Ramjit, said the family had approached the hospital’s Chief Executive Officer Michael Khan for the results of an investigation that was launched but was told that the information collected was confidential and that they would be further informed after the file was sent to the Health Minister.
Ramjit said he was informed that the file was sent to the minister to be reviewed before any action can be taken. He said Khan spoke to them last Monday and they were yet to receive word on the findings.
He said the minister had also promised to meet them once he had received the file but to this date he has not called them for a meeting.
The elderly man said he had learnt that the Chief Medical Officer made recommendations to put systems in place to properly monitor maternal patients at the hospital, especially when labour has been induced. He said that even though he agreed with this, he believed the doctors and the nurses who tended to her should resign. He said the slackness they demonstrated, proved that they were not experienced enough to work at such a hospital.
“I think they should resign… The nurses don’t care about anybody life… They made this happen… They know that they shouldn’t give her those tablets and they did,” he said, questioning why “they didn’t tell her husband or us that they were going to induce labour?
“What are they doing with people like them? They are not fit to work there,” he repeated, while lamenting that many mothers and children had died at the hospital and reports were compiled but nothing was done. He said hospital officials were doing a great job at hiding maternal deaths.
“If you want to go to the Georgetown Hospital you have to sign your death warrant,” he said, while noting that his daughter had become one in a long list of maternal deaths.
He added that the hospital had some serious issues to address. He said patients would call nurses and they would not answer. He stated that the night before his daughter went into the Operation Room, she had called for the nurses to help her because she had started to feel pain but no one went to her assistance. “…And this is not just the maternity ward it’s every ward,” he said.
Ramjit said the hospital’s carelessness has left Singh’s two children motherless. He said it should compensate the children and her husband for their loss because it accepted fault in her death. He said when he had brought this to Khan’s attention, he was told that they needed to get a lawyer if they were going to tread those grounds.
Singh’s mother Chandra Ramjit said what happened to her daughter was “criminal” and she wanted answers about why the doctors would induce labour when they were aware that her clinic card read that she should have a C-Section. “They hurt me, so I left with a sore on my heart… every day I have to cry for my daughter,” she said, while pointing out that her family, and especially the children, had suffered a great loss.
A post-mortem examination found that Singh died as a result of a ruptured uterus, among other complications.
According to a World Health Organisation (WHO), UNICEF, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the World Bank and the United Nations Population Division report ‘Trends in Maternal Mortality Estimates 1990 to 2013,’ Guyana is among five countries in the Caribbean and the Americas with the highest rates of maternity deaths.
This report conflicts with a statement made by Health Minister Dr Bheri Ramsaran, who had said that Guyana was doing well in reducing maternal mortality and the country was close to achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 5A.
However, according to the report it is improbable that any country in the region or the Americas will achieve the goal, which calls for a reduction of the maternal deaths ratio by three quarters between 1990 and 2015.
