Chief Executive Officer in the Ministry of Health, Dr. Peter Allen, told the media on Wednesday that a baby mix up at the Western Regional Hospital, which resulted in a family being given the wrong baby to bury after a miscarriage was “simply unforgivable and so terribly sad.”
Family members of the baby wished not to identify the baby’s mother when they appeared on local news channels but the child’s grandfather, Orlando Muschamp, told the news media that his daughter had complications during delivery which resulted in her baby dying on Tuesday, June 18th. The baby was taken to the hospital’s morgue and by Saturday, June 22nd all preparations had been made to bury the child. Muschamp explained, however, that when he had gone to the morgue to get his grandchild, the baby was not in the morgue; it had been given to another mother who had a miscarriage. That miscarriage however did not go to the full development and was only a fetus. The baby had been given to that family two days earlier, on Thursday, June 20th.
There was no way of explaining how the mix up could have happened and after further investigation, the family managed to locate the baby in a shallow unmarked grave at the cemetery in Camalote village. Since the mix up, the baby’s body was returned to the family. Interestingly enough, when the baby was exhumed from the shallow grave, it had on a name tag clearly identifying who the baby was for.
On Tuesday, June 25th, the Ministry of Health issued a press release expressing deep regrets for the “unfortunate series of events.” It notes that there was “procedural error by staff members of the hospital.” CEO Allen followed suit also expressing his sympathies and regret for what took place at the hospital and instructions have been given to the Director of Health Services to investigate the sequence of events that led to the incident. That report, stated Dr. Allen, should be ready soon. He added that so far the mix up can be attributed to “direct non-observance of protocol which could be attributed to one or two individuals.” He concluded that without denying proper process to those responsible, a decision has been made to suspend two officers while investigations are ongoing in the matter.
