GPHC misplaces dead babies in
overcrowded morgue
The bodies of babies, untagged and stacked up in no particular order, is the situation that prevails at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC&rsquo
morgue. This disturbing state of affairs was highlighted yesterday by
Roger Smith, father of a misplaced dead baby.
concerned father, Roger Smith. Smith said that he visited the public hospital yesterday to retrieve the body of his child but workers there were unable to honour his request. According to the man, while his eight-day old son was born at the West Demerara Regional Hospital, two days after his birth he was transferred to the Georgetown Public Hospital. The child, the man said, was diagnosed with jaundice. Jaundice is a common and usually harmless condition in new born babies. It causes yellowing of the skin and the whites of the eyes. And according to medical experts, untreated infant jaundice may lead to brain damage and even death. But Smith said, yesterday, that his baby was administered what he believe was antibiotics “or something like that” but based on his observation his child’s condition worsened. “He was given oxygen then he was placed on life support. Eventually he succumbed,” said Smith. He is suspicious about his child’s demise. “This thing with jaundice and the baby dying is kinda weird,” he intimated. The man said that while at the hospital morgue “I see like four to five drawers with babies, like 20 babies in a drawer…all just thrown in like that, like pieces of meat, no tags, no nothing and no proper records.” “They keep pulling out baby after baby looking for the (baby’s) sex and I see a whole set of babies wrapped up with no tag just tossed and thrown in,” added Smith.
Persons outside the GPHC’s morgue yesterday.
According to him, he waited for two and a half hours while morgue workers searched but failed to locate his dead child. “I don’t know what’s going on; these people are sick,” said Smith as he recalled how the morgue workers stopped searching for his son to attend to the parents of at least two other dead babies, but were also unable to locate those too. Other parents at the morgue yesterday were too emotional to share their concerns. “They are not finding babies right now is just adults (bodies) they finding,” observed Smith who added, that the explanation given by the morgue workers for their inability to locate the remains of the babies is that “the man who is supposed to know is not around.” Although a senior official at the hospital confirmed the state of affairs, the official was not willing to formally comment on the matter yesterday.
