The mother of a stillborn baby took health authorities to court for R500,000 in damages after she buried the wrong body due to the bungling of the hospital.
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THE Mafikeng High Court has turned down the R500,000 damages claim a mother lodged against a North West Province Hospital and provincial health officials after she was given the wrong baby to bury due to a mix up at the facility.
The court was told that only one mortuary attendant was employed at the Lehurutshe Hospital in the North West Province at the time, and she had her hands full, as this incident occurred during the height of the Covid-19. While the attendant was dealing with another family and queues formed as other family members tried to claim their loved ones, the wrong baby was taken by mistake.
The mother of baby A, only identified as M (the plaintiff), instituted damages for the grief she had to endure by burying the wrong baby, who was later exhumed. She was eventually handed her own baby to bury. Baby A (the plaintiff’s baby) died of natural causes during birth, while baby B was six months old and she died at the same hospital after she had fallen ill. It turned out that both babies were in the same fridge in the mortuary, but both had tags on their bodies to identify them.
As the mortuary attendant was busy, she told the funeral undertakers to look in the fridge for the body instead of handing the body over to them herself. They took the wrong body - a mistake which was only discovered after the burial.
The plaintiff told the court that the hospital staff acted negligently by failing to verify that the remains handed over to her family were that of her baby. She claimed that shortly after giving birth to her dead baby, she was never allowed to see the body when it was put into a coffin.
According to her, she was phoned by the hospital staff a day after her baby was buried at her family home to tell her that she had buried the wrong baby. The remains of baby B were subsequently urgently exhumed and replaced with the body of her own child.
The mother said she has suffered trauma, discomfort, emotional shock, as well as pain and suffering due to burying someone else’s child. The plaintiff said she is not even certain if the child she re-buried is hers or not because in her culture, she is not allowed to see the corpse. All this has affected her family greatly and resulted in her health deteriorating, resulting in "constant headaches,” she told the court.
The Acting Clinical Manager for Lehurutshe Hospital acknowledged the bungling with the bodies but explained that they did arrange with a social worker to counsel the aggrieved families. He testified that they exhumed the body and re-buried the other body at state expense. According to him, they did not deny anyone an opportunity to see the baby, but he did acknowledge that in some cultures families did not allow the mother to see the body.
The mortuary attendant, meanwhile, explained that she only noticed the next day that the hearse had taken the wrong baby. This was after baby B’s family came to get the body and the fridge was opened, showing only the body of the newborn. She said in her 18 years working there, this was the first time a body was swapped.
Acting Judge JT Maodi commented that the incident occurred in 2020. He noted the plaintiff claims to have recurring headaches, but no professionally diagnosed medical condition or evidence was tendered in respect of that.
“The plaintiff cannot simply allege shock. It must be substantiated by expert psychiatric evidence…I do not know if the plaintiff has reached maximum medical improvement in that she will remain in this mental state (with headaches) for the rest of her life or the symptoms will resolve over time and if so how long.”
The judge added that in the absence of any medical evidence on these aspects, the court has no choice but to turn down her claim.
Cape Times