On October 10, Aparna and Chethan BV posed for the camera happily. It was Aparna’s maternity shoot and she was due to deliver the couple’s first baby in two weeks.
Aparna, an employee with a private bank, wanted to post the pictures immediately on Facebook, but Chethan told her to wait. “I wanted the baby to be born and then share pictures to the world. I was not comfortable sharing it before that,” Chethan says.
Perhaps he had a premonition, as eleven days later, 28-year-old Aparna died at a private hospital in Bengaluru on October 21 morning after complications during childbirth. The baby was born brain dead and died that night.
Speaking to The News Minute, Chethan alleged that his wife and son would have still been alive if not for the hospital’s negligence.
“We were told to get her admitted and they said they will try for a normal delivery,” Chetan said, adding that she was given labour-inducing tablets thrice after she was hospitalised on October 20. “They gave the tablets at 6 pm, 10 pm and 2 am. At around 5.00 am she was moved to the labour delivery and recovery room (LDR). At 5.30 she was taken to the operation theatre.”
Chetan also claims that the hospital was not forthcoming about her condition. “We were not told anything clearly. One nurse said ‘rupture’, that’s all we knew. At around 8.30 am (on Oct 21), her doctor told us that she was not responding. But she was clearly dead by then, they did not even tell us. It was only after 10.00 am that a nurse told us Aparna was no more, that too when my brother-in-law asked them,” Chethan said.
The family has alleged that the hospital was not prepared for any emergency and was only expecting a normal delivery. “There were no oxygen cylinders in the room, they were struggling. We think the baby passed stool. We are not sure of what happened and no one was telling us properly,” Chethan said.
The trauma did not end there for the family. “We were shown the baby at least two hours after it was born and the doctor told us he was floppy (brain dead) and they will try and save him. The very day, my baby died. They were not forthright about the baby’s condition, only one of the doctors told me there was no hope.”
Motherhood Hospitals chairperson Mohammed Rehan Sayeed however denies there was any delay or negligence. “The doctor-in-charge followed the WHO protocol and administered pain inducing medicines. At around 4.30 am she was only 5 cms dilated, but the fetal heart rate was down and so we wanted to shift her to LDR. During the time between the shifting from room to LDR and then to theatre, her water broke. We think that it was a case of amniotic fluid embolism,” the doctor said.
Amniotic fluid embolism is a rare obstetric emergency in which amniotic fluid that surrounds the baby in the uterus or fetal matter enters the mother’s blood stream via the placental bed of the uterus and triggers an allergic reaction. It is most likely to occur either during delivery or immediately afterward.
“The reason why we believe it was amniotic fluid embolism was because she was showing allergic reactions on the theatre bed, her face and body was beginning to swell. The first thing to do was to take the baby out and so an emergency C-section was done. It seems like after delivery, there was a second exposure to embolism, which resulted in a cardiac arrest,” he said.
Rehan Sayeed flatly denies the family’s allegation that they were kept in the dark. “At 8.30 am, the doctor told them. I have video proof. (CCTV footage with no audio).”
Chethan says they were only told his wife was not responding and that something had gone wrong even before she was taken to the LDR, but the hospital was being cagey about it.
A Facebook post by a relative of the family said that the fight was against ‘powerful people’. The Motherhood hospitals is run by a private consortium that includes actor Mammootty’s son Dulquer Salman and son-in-law Dr Rehan Sayeed.
“How are they connected to this? Dulquer invested five years ago, are people going to blame him for that?” Sayeed asked.
Sayeed added that he was ‘sympathetic’ to the family’s plight, but he believed his doctors were not at fault. “Aparna’s friend was the anesthetist. The family attacked the gynecologist,” he added.
But for Chethan all this is surreal. “My wife could not think of anything other than the baby. She had shopped for the baby, kept everything ready. She had even planned the naming ceremony. Our dreams have been shattered and I want justice. Today it happened to me, but I don’t want anyone else to suffer," he says.