Two Maternal Deaths

Yesterday, we lost SHD. She was sick, but stable, while I saw her in the morning. I was in outpatient department, when I got a call that she had a cardiac arrest. The problem was that it was some time after that she had the arrest and the nurses could not find a doctor in the immediate vicinity to come and help.

I knew that there was no point in attempting a resuscitation. However, we tried the routine procedures. . . . but without any success.

And then we lost LD 4 days back. Couple of days after the surgery, she went into florid septicemia. She was being ventilated. And she started to pour out pus from the lungs, abdominal drain and also from her vagina. The relatives requested that we do not do anything heroic. Obviously, they were poor and was slowly noticing how the expenses went up.

After quite a long time, I withdrew life support for a young life.

Then, there was PD. A primi in her last weeks of pregnancy. She had not been doing well since about 2 weeks. Yes, 2 weeks. And she was taken from hospital to hospital. She was gasping as she was wheeled into NJH three days back. In fact, the relatives told us that she has been gasping for breath since 2 days. Dr. Johnson, our doctor on duty realised that there was nothing much he could do.

2 gm% was her hemoglobin. By the time, he found out a donor, she was dead.

So, we had 2 maternal deaths due to anemia last week. I wonder how long it will take for our guys in the thrones of power to realise that such preventable deaths are a major deterrent to development.

There is now one more near maternal miss patient in acute care. BDD, whom I wrote about in the last post has been weaned off the ventilator today morning. Kindly pray that BDD would recover completely.