Pregnant woman and child die, family accuses K.H.M.H.
Stories about deteriorating conditions at Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital are nothing new, as this station has, from virtually the day it opened, chronicled everything from shortages of critical supplies and use of outdated medicines… to the building’s leaking roof and peeling tiles. Tonight our look at K.H.M.H. is more serious as the family of a pregnant woman is charging that the hospital’s negligence has resulted in the death of both the mother and child. Thirty-seven year old Miriam Usher, nine months pregnant, arrived at the facility complaining of a severe headache. According to her sister Sharon Usher, who also happens to be a nurse, that’s when her real troubles began.
Sharon Usher, Sister of Deceased
“She went to the Karl Heusner Thursday night around 8 o’clock with a complaint of severe headache. Her feet was swollen, her eyes puffy and she went to see the doctor and the nurse did not take any vital signs such as temperature, pulse and respiration and blood pressure. That’s routine screening for patients whenever they see a doctor.
She was full term pregnant. She was swollen as far as I understood. She was swollen all over; that is preclamcia. The nurse that has the patient should detect that right away or know more or less that it’s an emergency. The first thing that should be done as far as we should know as a nurse is to get the baby out. The doctor would usually put an I.V. and to get the blood pressure down and the first thing he usually does is to try to get the baby out. And, when the baby comes out that would lower the blood pressure.”
Usher says when she arrived at her sister’s house Friday morning the body was still warm and she was informed that the paramedics had come and gone.
Sharon Usher
“I call the hospital and that’s what the paramedics told me. That they were there but couldn’t do anything. While I was on the phone with them the police came because they say they can’t move the body until the C.I.B. comes. When they came they didn’t even touch the body and they came asking questions. When she died? What medication she was on? Was she on any other medication? And they didn’t touch that body.”
News Five checked with several medical practitioners who confirmed Sharon’s suggestion regarding the standard diagnosis and treatment for preclamcia. For a reaction from hospital authorities we spoke to Chief of Staff John Waight who told us that an investigation is underway, the results of which will be made public shortly.
In related news we have learned that an earlier mystery reported on this broadcast last month concerning a fetus at the city dump, has been at least partially solved. According to police sources the dead infant was not the result of an abortion or murder of an unwanted child by its mother. It was instead the body of a baby that died at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital but instead of being incinerated, was by mistake thrown out with the hospital’s everyday garbage. An internal investigation is reportedly being carried out to see how something like this could have happened.
