Parents accuse Santa Joana maternity hospital for baby’s death – 08/02/2023 – Health

A couple who lost one of their twins at two days old accuses Hospital Santa Joana, one of the main maternity hospitals in São Paulo, of negligence followed by fraud to cover up the alleged medical error.

The São Paulo Public Prosecutor’s Office joined the case after police chief Victor Melo da Silva, 36, called him on. He is the father of Davi, who died at dawn on July 3, in the hospital’s ICU. The newborn, according to him, would have “asphyxiated by bronchoaspiration of his own vomit”, after drinking milk, and did not have “proper assistance” from the team on duty.

Still according to Silva, the crime “was covered up by the maternity hospital through the fraud of medical records”, and the doctors responsible for the care forged a false cause of death in documents that attested to the death.

In a note, Santa Joana says that, “for reasons of medical secrecy, it clarifies that it cannot share more details about the case”. But he points out that the institution “did not detect any non-compliance with assistance protocols and reiterates that it is available to the competent authorities for a thorough investigation of the facts”.

The civil police officer says that two doctors informed him that his son had suffered a sudden death – a cardiac arrest caused by some pathology in the heart. Examinations carried out in the neonatal period, including a fetal echocardiogram performed at the maternity hospital, did not detect any failure in the organ, according to the father.

Otorhinolaryngologist Marilia Gabriela Panontin, 34, would have been suspicious of the justifications given for her son’s death. She claims that when they took her to meet the newborn, he “already had very pale skin, purple skin and a cold body”, so he had not just died, as she had been told.

Panontin says that he asked to see sheets of his son’s clinical condition, and in them he read a description of “choking” and contradictory notes on the control times.

“After all, if my son had gone into cardiac arrest at 2 am, how could there be notes that, at the same time, he had all his vital signs normal?”

The report presented to the Public Prosecutor’s Office includes copies of documents attributed to Santa Joana.

The couple suspects that Davi was not being supervised in the neonatal ICU, hence the delay in realizing that he had choked on regurgitated milk.

The pregnancy was planned, says the mother. It happened through in vitro fertilization. Parents say that, as is common in this procedure, the embryos have undergone a prior biopsy. The report indicated that the material was viable and healthy, with no congenital syndromes.

Davi and Lara’s trousseau was made at Disney, and the duo was born after 35 weeks of gestation. A full pregnancy is around 37 and 42 weeks, so they were technically premature, which is why they were taken to the ICU, to be monitored and to gain weight. Davi arrived with 1.8 kg, and Lara, 2.1 kg.

According to the parents, the medical bulletins until the early morning of the 3rd reported that everything was going well with the twins. They even took their children in their arms and took pictures with them.

Silva says that, at first, the doctors in charge of the case tried to convince him that his wife’s “sanity was very compromised” due to the loss and the puerperium, and therefore insisted on a fanciful version that Davi had died after choking. The role of the family, therefore, would be to calm her down.

He also accuses the hospital team of misleading relatives in charge of bureaucratic procedures so that the newborn’s body was cremated, which jeopardized a more thorough investigation into the reasons for the death. The body was not forwarded to the IML (Legal Medical Institute). Federal legislation says that, in case of “violent death”, cremation must be authorized by court order, which did not occur.

Panontin wrote a text about his son’s death. In it, he asks forgiveness for having trusted the wrong people and promises to seek justice.

“Unfortunately, I cannot go back in time and protect you from those who should have protected you. However, I promise to do everything to honor your memory and not let those responsible for your death continue to try to silence the voice of a mother who still feels (and will never forget) the great pain of losing a child.”

The Human Rights Prosecutor’s Office (Public Health) is monitoring the case and, in the report, says that “a letter requesting information and an ICU inspection was sent to Cremesp and Coren, the regional councils of medicine and nursing in São Paulo “.

The maternity, in a note sent to the newspaper, says that it is a “serious institution and has been dedicated to maternal and newborn health for over 75 years”, and reiterates that it did not find any flaws in the care protocol.