Death twin babies: Edo Hospital denies professional negligence

Management of the Med-Vical Medical Centre in Benin City, the Edo State capital, where twin babies died few days after they were admitted, has denied being complicit in their deaths.

It said it took proper care of what it termed “the very ill extreme pre-term twin babies” referred from another facility to them.

The hospital, which denied allegations of medical negligence, secrecy and incompetence in the handling of the twins, said the mother saw the corpses before they were taken to the mortuary.

Both babies died on separate days at the neo-natal intensive care centre.

Parents of the babies, Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Sylvester, had in a petitioned to the Police called for discreet investigation into the deaths.

They also called for autopsy even as they accused the hospital of taking one of the babies to the mortuary without informing them.

Consultant Paediatrician/Neonatologist of the hospital, Dr. Enato Gertrude, said she received the babies from a second private hospital about 9pm on July 9.

Enato said the babies were in a critical condition and were diagnosed to have severe prematurity, severe respiratory distress syndrome, severe neo-natal sepsis and peri-natal asphyxia.

She said the hospital started treatment to save the babies despite inability of the parents to pay 50 per cent of what was needed before treatment.

According to Enato, the first twin died after eight days after admission, while the second one died three weeks later.

 “I wasn’t there at the delivery. I don’t know what transpired. I don’t know everything that happened until they got to our facility which was several hours after the children were born, because they came into our facility very ill.

“When the children came, we diagnosed them and put the babies on the machine and started treatment, there is a minimum deposit that is supposed to be paid. The babies needed tubings, surfactants and caffeine citrate, which are expensive. They are not even readily available over the counter.

“They’re actually specially ordered, specially packaged, and cold chain must be maintained with them. And they are quite expensive. I don’t produce them. I buy them to use for the babies. And it’s supposed to help these babies. So at this point, the parents didn’t have enough money for all of this. I think the father had less than 50 per cent of the money because he said he couldn’t get the money at that time.‘‘

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 “He came to meet me and I just told the billing officer not to bother them, let’s attend to these babies first, collect what he had. So, I think then he had just N250,000 or so for each baby. But, we were not focusing on the money. We just needed to save the lives of the babies of which we continued the care.

 “We placed both babies on the machine and we continued to give antibiotics and oxygen therapy. And at a point, we noticed that the respiratory distress was not getting better and we informed the parents.

“While on admission we noticed the babies had thrombocytopenia and immediately we told the parents to get what they call platelets. Due to the severe sepsis, we also requested for blood culture.

“At a point on day eight, we noticed that the thrombocytopenia for baby two was not getting better despite all that we had done. A diagnosis of severe neonatal sepsis with multiple organ dysfunction and disseminated intravascular coagulation was made.

“So, we called the parents and counselled them that we needed to put the baby on the ventilator for complete life support but at this time the baby was bleeding from thrombocytopenia and we carried the parents along. They saw what happened. Despite all our resuscitation efforts for the baby, the baby succumbed to the illness. The father wasn’t happy after we explained everything to him. It was quite painful at that time for everybody.

Following the passing of the first twin, the father became hostile and we tried to counsel him but he was difficult to get him to calm down. We even suggested referring the second twin to University of Benin Teaching Hospital (UBTH), but he quickly declined and pleaded for treatment to continue, as they had nowhere else they preferred to go to.

“We did a lot for these babies to ensure that the second baby continued to live but two weeks after the passing of the first baby, we noticed bleeding continued for the second one despite blood transfusion with platelets administration, and the baby needed a mechanical ventilator (life support).

“We counselled the mother and told the mother that at this point that the baby had poor prognosis. Chances of survival was slim and she said yes that we should continue to do everything she has faith that the baby will survive.

“On Wednesday, we saw a little bit of improvement but it declined again and the baby had to be continued on mechanical ventilator life support, but the baby succumbed to the illness.

Due to the delay in claiming the body after 12 hours of demise and after several attempts to reach the father to no avail, we decided to take the body to the mortuary. We never denied the parents’ access to their child’s body.”