Fight Over Dead Baby

Posted: Daily GUide |Saturday, 10 April 201o

By Charles Takyi-Boadu
Mr & Mrs VaahThe death of a baby boy, minutes after his birth, at the Lister Hospital has sparked a raging controversy between his parents and management of the health facility, located along the Spintex road in Accra.

The boy’s parents, Thomas and Elizabeth Vaah, accused the staff of the hospital of ‘professional incompetence and negligence’, which they claimed contributed to the death of their baby on March 9, 2010.

Though management of the hospital had come out with a statement to deny any complicity in the death of the boy, since according to them “our doctors continually work hard to excel and deal with medically challenging cases to the best of their human ability and thus cannot be termed as professionally incompetent”, his parents insisted he would not have died if the medical personnel on duty, on the day, had taken good care of his mother during delivery.

Whilst extending their deepest condolences to the parents, family and friends of baby Nyilale Vaah, the management of Lister Hospital insisted that its personnel were in no way negligent and or acted negligently and did not agree with any claim for compensation whatsoever.

For this reason, they declined to pay the amount of GH¢2million being demanded by Mr. and Mrs. Vaah as compensation for their loss.

However, the parents said they were in talks with their lawyers to determine the next line of action on the issue.

In a statement issued in Accra yesterday, management of the hospital expressed regret at the devastating pain currently being endured by the family as a result of the loss of their baby, a situation that rarely arose at the Lister Hospital.

Management of the hospital narrated how they promised to conduct a formal internal enquiry into the issue when it came up and therefore asked Mrs. Vaah to put in an official request for a post mortem on the baby to ascertain the cause of death, to which they consented.

Aside that, they also claimed to have offered support from the hospital’s Clinical Psychologist for the parents, which they declined.

Furthermore, the Medical Director of Lister Hospital was said to have been in constant touch with the Vaahs after the woman had been discharged from the hospital, to enquire about their welfare.

In line with an agreement by both parties, the hospital’s management noted that the day after his death, the body of the baby was sent to the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital for a postmortem examination and same was communicated to the parents.

“Though Mr. Vaah was very persistent in his demand for the body, the procedure of an examination postmortem was explained to him and details of the Pathologist were readily given to him to make contact if he had any further questions or misgivings,” the statement noted.

Mr. Vaah was indeed said to have contacted the Pathologist with various details and gave the impression that he was satisfied with proceedings until the final report was released.

“As soon as the Pathologist called that he had an initial diagnosis but needed time to do further investigations to establish the cause of the initial diagnosis, the body of baby Vaah was released to his parents, a death certificate was prepared and they came to pick it up and explained to the Medical Director that they were keen to travel to Axim and bury their son next to his grandfather,” the hospital’s management said.

The management of the hospital emphasised that it was therefore surprised when it received a letter from the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), acting on behalf of the Vaahs, leveling various allegations of professional incompetence and negligence against the hospital and demanding a sum of Two Million Ghana Cedis (GH¢ 2,000,000) as compensation.

Solicitors of the hospital were said to have responded to the letter and indicated its inability to give any response till the Pathologist submits a full report on the boy’s death, only for them to realize a foundation with the website www.vaahjuniorfoundation.org had been set up in honour of the deceased and all the allegations and more, which were contained in the letter from their Lawyers, repeated there.

According to the hospital, the final postmortem report indicated that the child may have died as a result of “multiple organ haemorrhages most probably due to a bleeding Diasthesis or Coagulation defect with bleeding precipitated by ‘trauma’ of labour (childbirth).”

A copy of the full “Postmortem” report is said to have since been made available to the Vaahs through their lawyers.