Baby dies inside mother's womb because urgent Ceasarian operation was missed by doctor who had gone on leave!

Baby dies inside mother's womb because urgent Ceasarian operation was missed by doctor who had gone on leave!

A father gave testimony at the inquest into the death of child in wife's womb ending in a still birth being congested with excreta as a result of a delay due to negligence of doctors of the child when the child was to be delivered after an urgent Ceasarian operation.

The said child was supposed to have been delivered at Mawanella Base Hospital on February 9th. On the occasion when the husband concerned had accompanied his wife to consult the private doctor, the

latter has informed the patient wife that she ward herself at Mawanella Base Hospital and accordingly the husband after acceding to the doctor's advice and was admitted on 10th morning the wife had suffered labour pains. Since she had become rather serious on both 11th and 12th, the husband has inquired as to why the doctor is not summoned when he had been made to understand that he was on leave, the husband said.

It was a matter of grave concern why the child was delivered without a normal operation and after going on leave on all 3 days of February 10th, 11th and 12th he mentioned this on 12th night to the doctors at the hospital in which instance the patient should have been transferred to Kegalle General Hospital by doctors of the hospital  since there was nobody to attend to the operation. Later however the doctors there who examined her had pronounced that it was too late and that the child had died inside the womb. It was further informed that even if an operation was carried out and the child was delivered, it was of no use. As such, since a normal delivery was permitted, on the 13th the pregnant mother had thus delivered a still childbirth.

The child's father happens to be an Army soldier named Demodera Wijesinghalage Wasantha Kumara, a 25 year old attached to the Trincomalee Artillery living in Gammangoda, Mawanella and he says that the cause of this death is the negligence of the doctor concerned. The postmortem was conducted at Kegalle General Hospital by Specialist Judicial Medical Officer of the same hospital, Dr. Ramesh Agaliyawanna and has delivered a verdict of death caused by the child suffering congestion of excreta accompanied by an undernourished umbilical cord.