‘That boy is mine’: Five hospital workers fired for ‘switching newborns’

The babies were recovered after several hours, returned to mothers.

FAISALABAD:

Five Allied Hospital workers were suspended from service on Wednesday after a newborn boy was replaced with a girl on Tuesday. A case was registered against them at Civil Lines police station.

The baby boy has been recovered and handed over to the mother.

The workers, three labour ward nurses, a midwife and a ward watchman are accused of switching the babies.

As part of the hospital’s internal inquiry, Medical Superintendent Rashid Maqbool formed a three-member committee investigate the incident. It comprises Gynecology Department Head Dr Faisal Aleem, Additional MS Dr Khurram and Deputy Chief (Nursing) Parveen.

Chaos spread at the labour ward on Tuesday when Tauheed Bibi, a resident of Samundri, was handed over a baby girl after she was shifted to the ward. Immediately her family started shouting at the nurses saying they had been informed that she had given birth to a boy.



Hospital administrators rushed to the ward and assured the family that the baby would be recovered and returned to the mother. The MS said that hospital records for the day were checked and it was found that one Kiran Bibi had given birth to a girl. She had however, been handed over a boy.

He said Kiran Bibi’s house in Nishatabad was raided and the boy was recovered. She was handed over her daughter who had earlier been given to Tauheed Bibi.

Kiran Bibi’s family told police that they, too, had been told that she had given birth to a boy. They said it was when some hospital staff arrived at their house with the baby girl that they found out that the newborns had been switched. Police, too, are investigating the incident.

Muhammad Siddique, one of the attendants with Tauheed Bibi, told The Express Tribune he was convinced that the newborns were deliberately switched. He believed that the family of the woman who gave birth to a girl that day had bribed the hospital staff.

He said when the hospital administration started looking for the other woman, “she was already gone”.

A few minutes after Tauheed Bibi was taken to the labour room, he said, one of the nurses had congratulated them on the birth of a boy.

“We saw the boy and then she took him back saying that a midwife will give him a bath. We tipped her for the good news,” he said. Later, however, a nurse handed them a girl child.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 31^st, 2013.