Ministry of Health expresses deep regrets for baby issue at Western Regional

Orlando Muschamp

In May, the PM was seated at the head table of the press conference room inside the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital addressing the deaths of thirteen newborns that were assigned to the Neo Natal Intensive Care Unit. In addition to launching an investigation with the assistance of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the PM announced that the unit would be refurbished. But there was another case involving a hospital that we reported on Monday night.  It was the heart-wrenching story of a twenty-three year old mother whose baby’s body was given away to another family and buried while she was hospitalized following a surgery. The outraged family lashed out at the hospital with allegations that the Western Regional Hospital committed life-threatening errors that caused the death of their baby and led to the body being given to the wrong family. There was also visual proof that the morgue was in a deplorable condition. Well today, the Ministry of Health (M.O.H.) issued a press release saying that it “deeply regrets the unfortunate series of events over this past weekend involving the delivery of a baby’s corpse to the wrong family at the Western Regional Hospital.” An initial investigation indicates that there was a procedural error by staff members of the hospital and M.O.H. expresses its sincerest apologies on behalf of the management and staff to the families involved and the public for the breach of confidence in the medical institution. According to the release, disciplinary action has been taken against several persons responsible and psychological support has been offered to all parties involved. The ministry tags the incident as an isolated case, but does it bring comfort to the family of Baby Angelie, who was allegedly buried in a shallow grave in Camalote, exhumed and then reburied in Belmopan? Grandfather of the deceased baby, Oralndo Muschamp, told Duane Moody in an interview on Monday that he believes that the series of events by the hospital following the death of the baby was a cover up.

Via Phone: Orlando Muschamp, Grandfather of Baby Angelie

“I think that they acted in defense of trying to cover up the negligence, the death of my little granddaughter in that they knew that it was because of negligence that we lost our granddaughter because all signs are there that my daughter reached the hospital at six p.m. She was already losing fluids and so forth, she was a high risk; that she should have been taken to the theatre and save her baby. And I think that because of the timing we had in allowing my daughter to recover from her surgery—from the cesarean by taking out the dead baby—I think they must have thought that we would have taken legal action against them and use the baby and in that fact try to find a way to get rid of the baby before we could have had the baby for funeral. But this was not our intention…our intention was that we were very dissatisfied that we lost our grandbaby, but most important that our daughter’s life was saved and we were allowing her to recover from her surgery.”

The release ends by saying that “the Ministry of Health reiterates that this isolated case is being addressed and has taken every necessary measure to ensure that there is not a repeat of the unfortunate incident.”