Earlier on, we showed you the woe and dismay of Pamela Fermin who delivered a stillbirth at the KHMH on Friday. For this 35-year-old mother of two, who so wanted a child now that her baby is 19 years old, the loss of the child was traumatic. But, as we showed you, what made it much more so was the negligence of the hospital administration which left the fetus to be thrown out with the dirty laundry, saved only by the diligence of the staff at the privately contracted laundromat. At a press conference this afternoon, the hospital administration offered no excuse; it was wrong and they ensured the public that everything will be done to avoid this happening again.
Dr. Alvaro Rosado, Chief Executive Officer - KHMH
"Standard operational procedures, in such cases, provides for such a fetus to be wrapped, taped, and properly labeled in preparation for proper disposal by the hospital. Our investigations have revealed that the fetus was properly wrapped, but it is yet unclear as to whether it was properly taped and properly labeled. If a fetus, which is not viable, is delivered stillborn, that fetus is usually prepared in the manner I described just now and the hospital would normally dispose of it by incineration. If there are families who request to have the fetus, the stillborn fetus, delivered to them so that they can conduct a burial, I suppose, I see no reason why they should not be entitled to that. In the majority of cases, which I am aware of, the fetuses are not fully formed, they are not well developed, and they are usually left at the hospital for us to dispose of by incineration. We are talking about two different things here: we are talking about body parts, or body tissues, which come out of the operating theatre, or from the delivery rooms, and we are talking about dirty laundry. These should be two separate things. Unfortunately in this case both things might appear physically to be the same because the fetus is wrapped in a sheet, as per standard procedure. In such cases the body tissues will be taken, once the family does not indicate a desire to keep the tissue, which is normally done as I said, that tissue will then be taken by a collection team and they will then incinerate the body tissues."
Alfonso Noble,
So that didn't happen in this case?
Dr. Alvaro Rosado,
"There was no time for that to happen because such a collection would not have been authorized by the hospital until the family had indicated they had no interest and that they were finished and they were discharged. Once they are discharged and they leave the tissue behind, then the hospital disposes of it. What we are considering here is what we call body tissue. This is not a child, if you want to put it that way, and I do know there have been times when body tissues have gone to the laundry inadvertently. What went wrong is that this properly wrapped fetus, which was prepared for incineration, somehow or the other, instead of going to the incinerator, went to the dirty laundry, to the cleaners. Whereas this incident might be explainable, it certainly is not acceptable and KHMH intends to use this unfortunate incident to revisit our policies and procedures in an effort to ensure that such an incident will never again occur in this hospital."
Hospital authorities say they are continuing their investigations as there are some persons the have yet speak with.
