On Friday night 21 year old Salome Busano delivered a baby boy by c-section at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. It was a special child to Salome because it was her last child since she got her tubes tied after the delivery. But tonight that baby boy is dead and she says the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital is to blame. She says the baby was born with jaundice and despite her concerns – a doctor at the KHMH discharged her on Sunday and told to put the baby in the sun. She says she did but yesterday he began vomiting violently. She rushed him to the hospital and he was pronounced dead a few hours later. An emotionally torn Salome spoke to us this afternoon about her baby boy’s final moments and why she blames the KHMH.
Salome Busano, Mother of Dead Baby
“When I went to the hospital the man at the hospital told me my baby had a lot of jaundice in him. When I checked the baby they had all kinds of things, tubes and everything on the baby, I even cried and all. I was praying to God that nothing really bad happened to him. The man came out and told me the baby stopped breathing and he is breathing through a tube.
After four o’clock they told me the baby heart stopped and a lot of their machines weren’t working in there, one of the machines wasn’t working that they needed and they were trying to bring him back and the baby couldn’t come back. He came out back and he told me the baby is dead.
My last baby and if I didn’t see him and he had just died and I didn’t see him then I wouldn’t have said nothing but I had already bring him home and I feel it.”
Keith Swift,
“I understand the doctor told you not to cry?”
Salome Busano,
“He told me for me to hold it down and to be strong but I couldn’t be strong and my last baby gaan. My bwoy went to sea and I don’t even know how to tell him that when he comes back.”
Keith Swift,
“Do you think that if after you had the c-section, they shouldn’t have released you on Sunday?”
Salome Busano,
“I think they shouldn’t have released me because I watched my baby and I know that he had the jaundice strong because I had two before that and I saw it. I know my baby wasn’t ready to come out yet.”
Keith Swift,
“And you didn’t have a choice to stay in the hospital?”
Salome Busano,
“They said I am ready to go home, nothing is wrong with the baby, just sun him in the morning and sun him in the evening. They didn’t even tell me he had an infection in the lungs.
I think is their responsibility why my baby is dead because he could have been still alive up to now. if he had stayed in there and I got the satisfaction and he died in there and I didn’t come home, I would have felt more better that he died in there and they were trying.”
Keith Swift,
“But they weren’t?”
Salome Busano,
“No they didn’t try because they sent me home knowing that my baby is sick.”
Salome Busano says she will file a complaint at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. Public relations officer Gary Ayuso told us that the family should take their complaint to the Maternal Child health Department at the Ministry of Health. Salome Busano is the mother of two other boys.
