Linstead mom pleads for autopsy report after child dies at hospital

Linstead mom pleads for autopsy report after child dies at hospital

May 1, 2020 0 By Horace Mills

A resident of Linstead in St. Catherine has expressed concern that, roughly five months after her baby died at Spanish Town Hospital in the parish, the medical facility is yet to furnish her with an autopsy report.

Fuchine Rochester told The Beacon that she has made several unsuccessful attempts to get answers from the hospital.

“I don’t know what is going on at Spanish Town Hospital, but I still need answers,” she said, adding that the deceased baby was her first child. “I promised my child at the funeral home that, if it was my last breath to find out how he died, I must find out.”

Rochester disclosed that her son, who was born on October 17 last year, died three days later.

A post mortem was conducted on November 26 last year.

Rochester is of the view that the child died as a result of negligence on the part of the hospital.

“It was negligence that caused my child to die. They were supposed to take the child by any means from me on the 16th [of October] and they refused and waited until the 17th. My child started to lose oxygen inside of me. So when the child came out he wasn’t breathing properly because the child was suffocating from inside. They delayed with me,” the mother lamented.

She continued: “When I gave birth, the doctor said to me that they couldn’t take me to do a C-section because it would be too late because the child would have died inside of me; possibly I would also die because I was literally passing away when they were taking me to the delivery room… To make matters worse, the incubator that the child was in wasn’t working properly, and the child was on the incubator from the Thursday [when he was born]. That helped to cause the child’s situation to get worse.”

Rochester further told The Beacon that she was surprised by the death because ultrasounds had showed that her child was healthy.

“I didn’t have a premature baby; my pregnancy was full-term,” she noted. “I find it strange [that the baby died], because all my ultrasounds show that the child was OK… When they send me to the hospital the Tuesday [to have the baby], I was OK; the child was OK. The only problem was that my pressure was a little high.”

Rochester further stated that her skepticism has been heightened by the run-around she has been getting whenever she tries to obtain the autopsy report from the hospital.

She explained: “The doctor that conducted the autopsy at the funeral home said the hospital was supposed to contact me within three to five days; they still haven’t contacted me despite me going there. When I went there, the lady that I spoke to at Death Registry said they were going to contact me because there was no record at Death Registry, so they were going to contact the nurse and contact me…

“I am not sure if there is something on the post mortem result that they just don’t want me to know. What are they hiding? What is really the problem? What caused the child to die? I called them in December, I still didn’t get any information. I went there in February and still didn’t get any information. I called them again and I am still not getting any information,” Rochester further lamented.


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