LAST month, the Country Representative of a United Nations – based organisation

opined that the reduction of maternal deaths in keeping with the Millennium Development Goal seems to be a target that presents problems for Guyana. Such an opinion,was fashioned no doubt on observation of occurrences with alarming rapidity, especially since the mid-2000.
The latest maternal fatality would seem to give credence to such a view alluded to above. The actual number of such deaths for 2013 is not at hand; except that this is the second one within the last three weeks.
The manner of 28-year old Luan Rodney and her unborn baby’s death raises the same issues as in the others: management, competency skills, responsibility, and negligence. Were these components, so critical in the difference between life and death for such a patient category, found wanting in this latest tragedy? If one is to be guided by accounts from a patient and the husband of the deceased – they were!
Notwithstanding that it had been agreed that Mrs Rodney had surpassed her due date, the fact is that a decision had to be made as to the method for delivery of her baby, once she was admitted as a patient. It is not known, as to why the use of the drug cytotec was recommended to induce labour, as against the traditional caesarean procedure. Nor is it known, on whose advice.
Every medical procedure has its peculiar rules at application, and management, once engaged, particularly as they relate to the delicate challenge of maternal delivery. And since the drug cytotec was employed,  then the relevant regime ought to have been enacted immediately, given the known potency of this drug and its extreme physical effects. Was this the only option for Mrs Rodney?
Based on Mr. Rodney’s account, his wife had followed all the rules punctiliously, beginning with attending her district clinic, then being transferred to that at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation, after an ultra-sound had determined a big baby. Conventional wisdom advises that in such known instances  a C-section is done.
A maternal death is a grievous loss to any family in which it occurs; young children become motherless, and a husband loses his wife. It takes a while for those affected children to understand the enormity of what has happened, as well as accepting the loss. This no doubt applies to the deceased’s husband, whose expectant joy of the arrival of his  new-born baby, has been converted to the emotional trauma of mourning.  He now has the challenge of continuing to parent his only surviving child – a daughter.
For the Ministry of Health, this latest death is undoubtedly a further setback to its many efforts at alleviating this problem that has attracted sharp public comments and criticisms, even from health professionals and experts, who all agreed that these deaths are generally avoidable.
Further, for a public, many of whom access the state’s medical services, this latest demise will  serve only to undermine confidence in a system that has been the recipient of numerous interventions costing billions, intended to ensure the delivery of a better quality of health care to Guyanese. Not so long ago, a surgical theatre had been commissioned in the maternal bloc, concomitant with post-graduate training in obstetrics and gynaecology for a number of health professionals. This makes it difficult to comprehend that such type of death is still possible.
A quite common feature in most of these maternal deaths is the absence of a specialist gynaecologist attending these cases where difficult birth is expected. Why are nurses/midwives solely left in charge of the management process? What when complications do arise, as in the case of Mrs. Rodney, where is the expertise?  These are some of the serious gaps that are quite evident in this very sad instance, involving the human factor.
It is time that health personnel whose negligence and incompetency result in deaths of patients, be  made to face the consequences. Avoidable medical deaths are a serious indictment of any health care delivery system, and the subject ministry must not allow its monumental efforts that have brought many benefits to citizens to retrogress and be compromised by health staff, who are grossly delinquent.
We are losing our women folk to the scourge of domestic violence, why should we continue to lose them in the precious, life-giving process?