A nurse in India reportedly decapitated a baby while pulling too hard during a difficult birth.
The male delivery nurse had reportedly pulled at the fetus so hard that he tore the body in two.
The mother, whose name is Dikhsha Kanwar, is reportedly fighting for her life in hospital, according to local media.
The horrific incident took place on Jan. 6 at a government health center in Ramgarh in the Jaisalmer district of Rajasthan state.
“If that wasn’t horrific enough, the nurse and a colleague [another male nurse] deposited the lower part of the fetus in the hospital’s mortuary,” Hindustan Times reported.
The staff then said there had been a “complication” with the birth, and the woman was then taken to Jawahar Hospital.
Dr. Ravindra Sankhla, a gynecologist at Jawahar Hospital, said the staff at the health center had told him that they had completed the delivery but left the placenta in the womb, according to Hindustan Times.
But when Sankhla tried to take out the placenta, he realized something was horribly wrong. He said he then referred the mother to Ummed Hospital in Jodhpur after he had stabilized the mother’s health.
Doctors at Jodhpur hospital operated on the mother to find the fetus’ head in the womb, at which point they informed the woman’s family.
Dr. Nikhil Sharma, who oversees the Ramgarh community health center, said that he was not on site at the time and that medical staff had conducted the delivery without informing him.
The two male nurses, Amritlal and Junjhar Singh, have not yet been arrested but the Rajasthan Police have filed a case against them under Indian Penal Code Sections 304A (causing death by negligence) and 336 (act endangering life or personal safety), Scroll.in reported.
Husband Tilok Bhati lodged a complaint against the two male nurses and claimed that they were drunk at the time, Jalam Singh, sub-inspector and investigating officer of the case, told the Hindustan Times.
“When questioned, the hospital staffers handed over the lower part of the foetus to us,” he said. “No arrest has been made so far.”
Dr. Usha Duggad, principal medical officer at Jawahar government hospital, told the paper that it was a rare case.
Baby Decapitated in UK
The case is reminiscent of an incident in the U.K. in 2018 where a doctor had decapitated a baby at a hospital in Dundee in a botched delivery.
Dr. Vaishnavy Laxman was able to continue working at the maternity wards at Ninewells Hospital following the tragic incident.
Laxman was delivering a premature infant in a breech position and had tried to carry out the delivery naturally, even though she could have given the mother a C-section delivery.
The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service panel had said that “the only appropriate course” was a caesarean section as the baby … was in the breech position with a prolapsed cord and low heart rate, and the mother’s cervix was less than 4cm dilated,” the Independent reported in June 2018.
This resulted in the fetus’s legs, arms, and torso to become detached, leaving his head in the womb.
The tribunal ultimately said Laxman’s fitness to practice would not be affected, and ruled that Laxman’s decision deliver a natural birth was “negligent and fell below the standards ordinarily to be expected” but did not amount to serious misconduct.
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