OUR health care facilities should not be under attack because lackadaisical nurses neglected their responsibilities. Those women that recently died during childbirth could have been saved. Yes, I am convinced that their deaths were avoidable, since many other women have safely given birth to healthy babies at those exact hospitals. Two of my cousins were born at Port Mourant Hospital, and I and all my siblings were safely delivered at the New Amsterdam Hospital; my niece and nephew also. The deaths of these women are not a result of poor health facilities. They are instead, simply and directly a consequence of delinquent nurses shirking their responsibilities on the job. The necessary health care needed was provided by the hospital. However, as long as these nurses refuse to become serious and organised with their jobs, and are not disciplined and do not respect their field, even the greatest improvements in our health care facilities will not save pregnant women when in delivery.
The nurses responsible for these women at their time of delivery and death should be severely disciplined. In fact, they should be dismissed!  Nurses should be reminded at all times, that they, like doctors, have a moral duty toward all patients in need of medical attention, and any patient in their care should be guaranteed that doctor’s or that nurse’s respect. These hospitals should not be condemned unless they fail to effectively discipline these nurses and all staff involved in this shameful and unfortunate tragedy.
What happened to these women is strikingly upsetting. It utterly disgraces us a nation. As a woman, I am aghast and horror-struck at this callous act of disregard for the life and safety of a woman crying out in agony for help, by other women sworn to devote themselves to the welfare of those committed to their care. This absolutely should not be. Any woman hearing this would think of childbirth as an even more frightening experience. These women are gone forever and sadly, their children are now motherless. Unfortunately, we cannot change what has already happened here, but what we must do, is ensure that no other woman suffers the same fate.