“Stop the blatant lies! How can I lose my baby, only for them to deny that any child died?” These words echoed from Zainab Eliasu, a grieving mother who tragically lost her three-day-old baby after a power outage struck the Tema General Hospital.
Her swollen, puffy, bloodshot eyes told a story of countless hours spent in anguish, mourning the precious baby she had carried within her for nine months. Each tear that stained her cheeks held the weight of her shattered hopes and dreams, mingled with the overwhelming love she felt for the little life she had lost. It is impossible to understand the pain of a mother robbed of the chance to cradle her newborn in her arms.
Amid her anguish, Zainab could not comprehend the audacity of the hospital to deny the undeniable truth of her loss. With her heart shattered and her grief overwhelming, she found herself confronted not only by the devastating loss of her child but also by the callous denial of the hospital’s officials.
“My baby wouldn’t have died if the power had not gone off”, she yelled and continued sobbing. As she grappled with the unimaginable pain of her loss, Zainab’s words rang out as a plea for justice and acknowledgement of her baby’s existence.
In the retelling of her agonizing ordeal, Zainab recounted the terrifying moment when her fragile baby, reliant on oxygen, began struggling to breathe after the power outage.
She recalled that she desperately called out for assistance, her voice trembling with fear and urgency. Yet, to her utter disbelief and despair, her pleas for help were met with indifference as the nurses on duty remained unresponsive to her distress calls.
The subsequent claims by the hospital, attempting to absolve themselves of responsibility by asserting that her baby’s death was not caused by the power outage, tore at Zainab’s already shattered heart. Each word denying the correlation between the outage and her baby’s demise felt like a knife to her soul. How could they dismiss the undeniable connection she felt between the sudden loss of power and her child’s desperate struggle for breath?
With tears choking her words, her mother Fatima Salifu spoke for her.
“I wouldn’t have spoken because I am fasting but the denial is what is hurting us”, she added.
Fatima continued the interview after several pauses: “My daughter told me that when she called on the health personnel to help her baby, they made fun of her. The baby couldn’t breathe properly. How can this happen to someone after delivering her child? Look at how swollen her eyes are from crying”.
The Denials
The Medical Director of the Tema General Hospital, Dr. Richard Anthony, said in a statement that no lives were lost at the hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) following a two-hour power outage.
The Medical Director said the attention of the hospital had been drawn to a publication circulating on social media that some lives were lost at the facility, following a power cut from the national grid. Dr. Anthony explained that the dedicated generator set to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) also tripped off for a short period and the hospital’s electricians worked to restore power to the unit until the national grid was restored.
The Greater Accra Regional Director of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), Dr. Akosua Agyeiwa Owusu-Sarpong also refuted allegations regarding the death of a newborn baby at Tema General Hospital.
Dr. Akosua Owusu-Sarpong clarified that investigations conducted by the hospital revealed a power outage occurred on Tuesday evening. Initially, the generators were operational, but they later encountered a fault that took approximately two hours to rectify.
Emphasizing the situation, she highlighted that despite the blackout, all monitoring devices in the ward where the babies were housed remained functional.
“So if a baby died, it is not as a result of the baby not receiving the necessary care as a result of the power outage because all the machines were working,” she stated firmly.
Dr. Akosua Owusu-Sarpong in an interview with Joynews further affirmed that all babies in the facility requiring oxygen were provided with it. “So the storage in the various equipment were working and every baby on that ward received the necessary treatment and support each baby was supposed to receive”, she said.
However, numerous pressing questions linger. Why did the hospital refute the demise of Zainab’s baby? Could the machines in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit have endured a power outage for 2 hours?
However, attempts to get management to answer these questions proved futile as both the Medical Director of the facility Dr. Richard Anthony and the administrator Apostle Dr. Samuel Obeng Mensah refused to comment.
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FM/Evelyn Araba Aidoo
