MOTHER of two, Evita Singh, also known as “Reno”, of 13 Lanchan Street, Better Hope, East Coast Demerara, and her unborn baby girl were the latest maternal deaths recorded at the Georgetown Public Hospital. And according to sources inside the GPHC, carelessness is 100 per cent responsible for the death of the woman.

Singh died at that public medical institution early yesterday morning, while her baby died on Thursday after health workers at the facility administered a drug known as “Cytotec”, which is used for the performing of abortions as well as to create passage for the delivery of babies.

The Guyana Chronicle was informed that doctors at the hospital administered six Cytotec pills to Singh, even before she began experiencing labour pains.

According to relatives, the woman was taken to the Georgetown Public Hospital on Monday last after feeling unwell, and doctors diagnosed that she was developing symptoms of the Chikungunya virus.

ADMITTANCE
Speaking with this publication yesterday, Chandra Ramjit, the dead woman’s mother, said her daughter was taken to the hospital on Monday night and she was admitted.

The first medication which was administered to the woman was Panadol tablets to ease the pains of the Chikungunya virus.

On Wednesday, the nurses began inserting the Cytotec pills into the woman in dosages of two, telling the woman that they were giving her the tablets to open her passage to deliver the baby.

She was reportedly monitored, and within the space of hours, was given two more pills, followed by another two, taking the total to six Cytotec pills having been administered to the woman between Wednesday and Thursday of last week.

The woman was visited by her relatives on Thursday, and she told them what pills were administered to her, and what the nurses had said it was for. She was also advised that by Friday she would deliver her baby girl, who up to that point was having a normal heart rate and was breathing comfortably, Evita’s relatives told this publication.

On Thursday morning, the woman also related to relatives that she was feeling pain and was passing some amount of blood. By Thursday afternoon, when relatives went back to the hospital, they were informed by the mother of two that she was passing more blood, and the pain had increased tremendously since the nurses had reportedly inserted two more pills into her body.
DISTRESS CALL
At approximately 03:00hrs on Friday, relatives received a distress call from persons at the hospital, who informed that family members should visit the hospital urgently, since Evita was in critical condition.

When relatives arrived, Evita was already unconscious, and she remained in that state up to the time of her death yesterday morning.

Doctors informed her relatives that they had to remove the baby from the woman, that the baby was dead, and they allowed the woman’s husband to take a look at the lifeless child.

The baby reportedly died because there is only one functioning operating theatre with only one machine that is used to deliver babies, the relatives alleged that they were told.

They related that doctors told them that when the woman was rushed to the theatre after developing complications, someone was already on the machine, and they were informed that Evita had to wait fifteen minutes before the machine was made accessible to her.

During that time the heart rate of the baby was decreasing, and by the time fifteen minutes had elapsed, the baby had died.

“We knew that the baby was dying, but we could not do anything because we had to get access to the machine and get her to the machine,” the relative recalled being told by one of the doctors who had attended to the woman.

The doctors also told relatives that the woman was bleeding badly, and had needed blood, something the hospital did not have at the time, according to the relatives.

The doctors also reportedly informed family members that the woman’s blood pressure had been low, and she had cholesterol problems.

Other health workers who are familiar with some family members confided that despite the woman’s inability to find passage for the baby, she was forced by health workers to push the baby out, since nurses were too lazy to perform a C-Section.

The pills and their forcing the woman to push the baby out while the baby was, in the first place, not perfectly positioned to be delivered, caused Evita to bleed internally, as she burst several organs inside, including her uterus, which, according to one family member, was burst in half, as advised by one of the health workers.
POOR HOPES
Mrs. Ramjit said that when she saw her daughter, she knew her daughter was going to die.

Denis Ramjit, Evita’s father, said that after listening to the explanation of the health workers, he also knew that his daughter was going to die. He said doctors told them that they needed blood because the hospital was out of supply, and shortly after, relatives having visited the hospital were told that the woman had lost several pints of blood; and the same hospital which had been declared out of blood informed that they had given the woman blood, something that never happened.

Relatives said that is the information they received from inside sources.

Relatives were also informed that, contrary to what they were told by certain doctors at the hospital, there was never a second surgery done on the woman after the first had been done to remove the dead baby; nor was there any attempt to have a third operation done. They told the Chronicle that after it was realized what the six pills had done to the woman, the doctors knew that there was no chance for the woman to recover, given the destruction that had occurred internally, and their inability to determine the source of the internal bleeding.

They told relatives that, because of the bleeding, they could not remove the woman from the theatre to take her for any other check, since she was in a critical state. They had informed relatives, however, that a second operation was going to be done on her, but according to the family’s inside source, all that was done was that the woman was taken into the theatre and left on a stretcher.

One relative explained the doctors told them that they knew the woman was bleeding on the inside, but had no idea where the blood was coming from, whether it was the head or the womb. They even told relatives, “This is one of the cases where we are unable to explain what really happened,” the woman’s sister-in-law recounted.
Written By Leroy Smith