Hospital Allegedly Leaves Stillborn Baby's Body Near COVID-Positive Mother For An Entire Day

A woman has come out against a hospital alleging the staff left her stillborn child's body near her the entire day despite her desperate pleas to remove it. The woman, who was COVID-positive, said "she cried the entire day seeing the dead infant's uncovered face."

The shocking incident happened in the Indian state of Kerala, reported Onmanorama. The woman, identified as Afsana, said she was taken to a government hospital in the city of Kottayam last Tuesday following labor pain. A worker at a cloth store, Afsana gave birth in an ambulance on the way to the hospital.

On arrival at the hospital, doctors found her infant lifeless. She was also diagnosed as COVID-19 positive. Though she was then shifted to the COVID-19 ward, the hospital staff brought her dead baby's body along. They wrapped the infant’s body in a cloth and placed it in a stretcher near her bed and left.

"The infant's body was near me all the time. To my shock, its face was not covered. I pleaded with the duty nurse to take the body away from there but she told me that the officials concerned were informed and that they would come soon," Afsana told Onmanorama.

Afsana added that the sight of her dead child made her cry the entire day. She said though the hospital staff took away the baby's body after a day, they didn't inform her what they did with it.

She also alleged that some hospital staff threatened her after she complained about the incident. This was Afsana's second pregnancy and she has a six-year-old son, reported East Coast Daily (translation).

Meanwhile, hospital authorities told Onmanorama that the body of the child was later shifted to the morgue. "Staff on duty at the Gynaecology Department said that the infant's body was placed far away from the labor room. All stillborn infants are shifted to the mortuary and are later buried together," a senior hospital official was quoted as saying by the news outlet.

He added that the hospital is yet to receive any formal complaints in this regard.

Recently, a hospital in the Indian city of Hyderabad was under scanner after a four-year-old boy who was undergoing treatment for lung disease died after a hospital employee allegedly removed his oxygen supply. The child's parents said the hospital staff was angry because they refused to pay him a bribe.