A 17-year-old mother of three is Guyana’s latest maternal death.
Nikacia Allen died on Sunday, 27 days after giving birth to her third child via Caesarean Section (C-Section) at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC). She is the seventh reported maternal death for this year.
When contacted by Stabroek News for comment on the case, acting GPHC CEO Allan Johnson yesterday said that “a committee has been set up which is looking at the situation and a statement will be issued by the Public Relations Department of the Hospital.”
Patricia Allen said her daughter, Nikacia, who hails from the North West District, was admitted to the GPHC on September 20th. On September 21st, Nikacia’s third daughter, like her two sisters before her, was delivered via C-Section. After the delivery, Patricia was told that Nikacia was haemorrhaging and had to remain in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
The elder Allen is claiming that while her daughter was in the ICU several procedures, including a hysterectomy, were conducted without her permission.
“One time they tell me she get hit in the head, then they say she lungs bad and she kidneys infected and all the time she bleeding. They did a next surgery and I didn’t know that. I know that she did bleeding and a few days after I ask the doctor if the bleeding stop and he say no because they had to take out her womb. I ask how they take out my daughter’s womb and they never ask me to sign any paper to do that,” Patricia said.
She further noted that after she questioned the decision to operate, she was called to a meeting with the doctors.
“They call a meeting with me and they say her womb was infected. I asked the doctor how the womb was infected. He say he don’t know but they had to [remove it] to save her life. She life didn’t save ’cause she gone down the drain,” the distraught mother, however, lamented.
The teen mother, whose two other children are four years and two years, reportedly never regained consciousness after the delivery of her third child. She instead spent one month sedated in the ICU before succumbing around 8pm on Sunday.
“She was lying there all the time and they were sedating her all the time,” her mother said, before adding that several days before her daughter’s death she began to notice signs of atrophy.
“I normally go and rub her hand and exercise her fingers. About three to four days before she died I cracking she finger and massaging she but in the thing I have to cover my nose I smelling something. I pull down the thing and smell she hand. The hand was smelling terrible. Her finger de start turning black and the hand smelling. No living person don’t smell like that,” she said.
Responding to questions about her daughter’s health before being admitted, Patricia said her daughter was well and “never sickly.” She, however, admitted that she was not aware that her daughter was pregnant so she couldn’t say what, if any, prenatal care she had received.
“She come from the interior on the Sunday and I take her straight to the hospital. I didn’t know my daughter was pregnant,” she noted.
Nikacia’s family, which is convinced that the hospital was negligent in some way, is determined to have a private autopsy performed on her body.
Their plans were temporarily stymied when they were denied permission to remove her body from the hospital. However, after meeting with Johnson yesterday, they were reported to have been granted permission to temporarily remove the body.
Today, the family plans to remove the body to Sandy’s Funeral Home to facilitate the private examination.
Meanwhile, the family is calling for health authorities to investigate Nikacia’s death.
“I want justice. I want somebody to look into what happen to my daughter,” Patricia said, while adding that she decided to approach the media because she is “trying to prevent other young people from dying in the same way.”
Allen’s death follows that of Vanessa Amsterdam, who died on October 2nd in very similar circumstances. In September, Alexis Syfox died after she developed placenta accreta following her third C-Section.
Other maternal deaths this year include Akeisha Richardson, 21, who died at GPHC on July 27th after delivering her first child on July 24th. In January, Marina Persaud, 19, of Golden Grove, died of a ruptured intestine after delivering on Christmas Day. Kamili Arjune, 22, died on Good Friday after a botched abortion, while in May, Yonette Gray, 20, died after delivering her first child by C-section at the Suddie Hospital. In June, Carol Bollers, a 41-year-old mother of five, died after what was believed to be a botched abortion.
A 2014 report, ‘Trends in Maternal Mortality Estimates 1990 to 2013,’ had ranked Guyana as one of the five Caribbean countries with the highest maternal deaths. Maternal mortality rate is measured as the annual number of female deaths per 100,000 live births from any cause related to or aggravated by pregnancy or its management, excluding accidental or incidental causes. It includes deaths during pregnancy, childbirth, or within 42 days of termination of pregnancy, irrespective of the duration and site of the pregnancy, for a specified year. Guyana’s mortality rate was measured at 250 deaths per every 100,000 births.
