Newborns swapped: family blames hospital administration in Karachi

As the staff changes the gender of the baby

KARACHI: In another case of alleged negligence by hospital staff, a family was made to believe that their two-day-old baby boy had died. It was only after the family began to bathe the newborn before the funeral that it realised the body was actually of a girl.

The family took the body back to the hospital and has no knowledge of where their newborn boy has gone missing. Expressing annoyance over the incident, the family said that the hospital administration is behind the disappearance of their newborn boy.

The family said that the boy was born to their sister on May 14 at the Liaquat National Hospital (LNH) and the hospital administration had kept him in the Intensive Care Unit citing his unstable medical condition.

On the night of May 15, the hospital administration informed the family of the newborn’s death and issued a death certificate, which also mentioned the gender of the dead as male. The body was later handed over to the family on the morning of May 16.

According to the family, they were charged Rs77,000 before they were handed over the body. However, representatives of the LNH denied the allegations placed by the affected family and said that the family never had a boy but a girl. They further said that the hospital staff had mentioned the gender of the newborn as male, at the time of the baby’s birth, in the medical summary, by mistake as they were fasting.

The family knew from day one that they had a girl, said the hospital representatives.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 17^th, 2019.