Niloufer gives stillborn’s body in a box

A mother’s trauma of delivering a stillborn baby was compounded when staff at the Niloufer Hospital handed over the body of the infant to the parents in a cardboard box that was used to supply IV fluids to the hospital. The body was wrapped in a bit of brown paper.

Ms Y. Sunitha from Hyderabad was admitted to the hospital on Monday evening in labour.

The baby she delivered on Tuesday was stillborn. This was a blow to Sunita and her husband Mahesh but worse was the callous manner in which the staff treated the baby and parents by bundling the body up in a cardboard box.

Angry and hurt, Ms Sunitha walked into the chamber which was being inspected by health minister Dr Laxma Reddy and showed him the manner in which the dead child had been handed over to them.

Dr Reddy was surprised

Niloufer officials said the baby’s body had been wrapped in cloth and given to the family. The baby’s mother insisted that the baby had been handed over in a box.

but the superintendent of the hospital Dr Ramesh Reddy said it was not possible.

“We do not give any dead child wrapped in a cardboard box or in paper. We had properly wrapped the child in a cloth and given it to the mother. The hospital does not know from where they have got the cardboard box and kept the child,” he said.

The hospital authorities spoke in different voices. Some claimed that as the couple was to go back in a bus, the body of the child would not have been allowed and hence they had packed it in the cardboard box.

Others said that in order to give a bad name to the hospital, the box was being highlighted in front of the minister.

The moot point is how did a clean box used for IV fluid come into the hands of the couple if it was not given to them by the hospital authorities? Was it lying in the corridors?

There is no answer to this. The mother stated very emotionally and angrily that the child had been wrapped in the cardboard box.