[www.inewsguyana.com] – The Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) has rubbished a media report that the bodies of babies, untagged and stacked up in no particular order is the situation that prevails at its morgue.
This follows a report by a daily newspaper that a concerned father, Roger Smith was disturbed with the state of affairs at the morgue after visiting the public hospital on Wednesday, May, 06 to retrieve the body of his child but workers there were unable to honor his request.
According to the man, while his eight-day old son was born at the West Demerara Regional Hospital, two days after he was transferred to GPHC. The child, the man said, was diagnosed with jaundice.
The GPHC in a statement expressed dissatisfaction with the article, deeming it, “deliberately misleading,” since contact was not made with the relevant authority at the hospital before the story was published.
Instead the GPHC noted that, “Mr. Roger Smith, who is claiming that he was unable to retrieve the body of his eight-day old son, in fact did locate the body. Further, the article alleged that the bodies of a number of dead babies in the morgue are untagged, however, the hospital would like to emphasize that this is completely untrue since bodies are “always tagged” so deceased persons can be easily identified.”
The hospital admitted that currently there are a number of dead babies’ bodies at the hospital’s morgue due to the refusal of families to collect the bodies.
“The hospital cannot bury the bodies until a certain amount of time has elapsed and it is determined that the families will not take on burial responsibilities. This is since burying someone whose family turns up to uplift their body can put the hospital in serious hot water,” the GPHC said.
It was noted that so far for the year, the hospital has done 17 burials.
a lot of babies dying