Newborn baby’s arm gets broken in private hospital’s care

A traumatised first-time father, whose four week-old baby girl has a broken arm, is demanding answers from hospital staff.

The father, who did not want to be named, said his daughter was born at Life Wilgeheuwel Hospital on December 14. Since she was underweight, she was sent directly to the neonatal intensive care unit for treatment.

“We were nearing a discharge over the weekend of January 11 to 13 and then on our visit on January 8 we received terrible, devastating, heartbreaking and just horrible news,” said the father.

“They explained to us that at 1.30pm the nurse was struggling a lot to soothe her and usually she is difficult but eventually calms down.

“The nurse’s best option was to undress her and give her a bath to soothe her. She saw her right arm all swollen up so bad that she yelled for the manager of the neonatal intensive care unit to come and look.”

The unit manager then did an immediate X-ray of her chest so as to be able to see her upper body, including her right arm, left arm and chest.

“Her upper right arm was broken, without any explanation up until this point.”

Baby Chloe, with a cast around her broken right arm. Picture: Supplied

The father said the paediatrician who was treating the baby told them that, medically, there did not appear to be any problem with brittle bones.

“This leaves us with the only explanation being that she was treated wrongly or mishandled in such way that she suffered from this broken arm,” he said.

The baby’s grandmother said someone from the hospital should take responsibility and explain to them what happened so the culprit could be held accountable.

“We still do not know what happened – whether one of the nurses picked her up and dropped her, or whether she fell, we don’t know.

“Someone must come out and tell us what happened because, at this point, we have no answers.”

The father said it was also fishy that his daughter’s clothes had not been changed by the staff nurses, which they were supposed to do on a daily basis.

“When we arrived on January 8, we noticed she was still wearing the same clothes we had left her in the previous day so someone must have seen her swollen arm and decided to leave her in the same clothes,” he said.

The hospital’s communications coordinator, Celia de Koker, had not responded to questions by the time of going to press. She referred the inquiry to Life Healthcare’s group communications manager, Tanya Bennetts, who also had not responded.

– news@citizen.co.za

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