Preya Eshwar
November 16 2018
Health workers at the West Demerara Regional Hospital (WDRH) have said that 16-year-old Preya Eshwar lost her twin babies as a result of spontaneous abortion or miscarriage and not by negligence as she claims.
Eshwar of Parika, East Bank Essequibo gave birth to the baby boys around 11:30 am on Saturday and they both died shortly after.
Her mother, Sharmela Beni had told Stabroek News that her daughter started having abdominal pains around 5:30 am.
She was taken to the Leonora Diagnostic Centre (LDC) where she was told she had an infection and was referred to the WDRH.
The health workers from the emergency room administered “saline and a blue tablet” and she said they told her that the girl had to have an abortion.
Beni believed that the medication was to induce labour because they were asked to take her to the maternity ward.
However, a source said that she was in fact given a muscle relaxant and other medications to decrease the contraction. The source said too that the gestation age of both babies were well below 27 weeks and as such it was considered spontaneous abortion.
The source said that based on an investigation, the girl only made two visits to the prenatal clinics, one at Parika and the other at the WDRH. As such, she did not have enough advice on how to protect herself against infections.
He added that she was “underage and underweight” and that could have increased her risk of having the spontaneous abortion.
He said when she visited the LDC the baby was “already crowning due to the infection” and that there was nothing they could have done to save them.
Eshwar learnt she was having twins when she had an ultrasound done on October 8. She had planned to have another ultrasound done on Monday last to take to her scheduled prenatal clinic at Parika on Tuesday. She said after this visit she would have been sent to the high-risk clinic.
Meanwhile, she said after she was sent to the ward, the health workers took about one hour before placing her on the bed.
They assisted in delivering the first baby, which, according to her, “came out by its foot.” They then placed the baby on Eshwar’s stomach.
She had said the nurses were “chatting and laughing” nearby when she told them that the other baby was “coming out.” But before they could reach to assist, the baby fell out in the bedpan.
She said the nurses then placed both babies on the bed on “thin cloth napkins” without wrapping them although the room was “extra cold” from the air-conditioning (AC) unit. The source said, however, that the AC has been down for a few weeks now that a fan was being used to cool the room.
Further, Eshwar said both babies were still moving and she had begged the nurses to place them in the incubator. But they refused saying that the babies were already dead.