KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Thursday directed the health secretary to ensure that all the recommendations and a mechanism, proposed by a judicial officer in the inspection report, about the identity of newborn babies be enforced in all the public sector hospitals.

Hearing a petition of a woman against doctors and paramedical staff of the Dr Ruth Pfau Civil Hospital Karachi for swapping her newborn boy with a dead girl, a two-judge bench of the SHC headed by Justice Salahuddin Panhwar directed the secretary for health to ensure that all the recommendations were followed in letter and spirit in all the public hospitals.

On the last hearing, the court had sought reports and mechanism for the registration of children born in the hospitals from the medical superintendent of the CHK and district and sessions judge concerned.

Petitioner says she gave birth to a boy, but was handed over a dead baby girl

When the matter came up for hearing on Thursday, a representative of the CHK MS submitted a mechanism about newborn babies, which was taken on record.

The bench also perused the inspection report of a judicial officer with regard to the identity and mechanism of newborn babies which included recommendations.

Immediate tagging recommended

The inspection report said that the hospital did not tag the newborn children as soon as possible as they were tagged after cleaning and washing and recommended that without wasting any time, the child must be tagged as per gender with his or her mother’s name before washing.

Around 70 to 80 children are born daily in the government hospital, which has a limited capacity for washing, which caused confusion, it added.

The report further suggested that instead of wrapping the children in a sheet or blanket, nurses must attentively dress the newborns in clothes proved by the attendants/mothers.

The hospital should make an official labour room list daily signed by the MS and the doctors and it must be fixed on the wall of the labour room or operation theatre, the inspection report said. Thumbprints or handprints are to be used for identification purposes and such prints may be on every register/case sheet of mother, admission registers of gynaecology, obstetrics and case files at the peads ICU.

The report further stated that it was highly intriguing that the nursery of paeds was solely relying on case sheet/files of children with stapled admission slips having computerised numbers and the nursery has no admission register and if the case file was lost or misplaced then what would be the repercussion of such an omission.

Sometimes, the attendants themselves transfer the children from one ward to another or another department and in some cases grandparents also commit mischief as they want a male child and remove the tags of the female child, thus there must be a strict protocol, it added.

The petitioner submitted that she had given birth to a boy in the CHK`s delivery ward and the resident medical officer issued a certificate to her confirming the birth of an alive baby boy.

The petitioner contended that she was discharged from the hospital a few days later, but her baby boy was admitted to the children`s ward of the hospital for treatment. After a couple of weeks the hospital staff informed her that her child had died and she was called to the hospital to receive the body, adding that she was flabbergasted to see the body of a baby girl given to her.

Published in Dawn, September 7th, 2019