The story of a woman who gave birth in a hospital washroom

Nobody is responsible for the incident in which a poor woman gave birth to her child in a washroom at a mosque inside Lahore’s Jinnah Hospital, says the three-member inquiry committee, which was assigned investigation into the incident.

Jinnah Hospital Board of Management Chairman Gohar Ejaz has taken notice of the incident and told the hospital’s medical superintendent to submit a report on the incident within 24 hours and take action against those responsible for the incident.

The inquiry committee said in its report that the woman whose name begins with the alphabet “A” visited Jinnah Hospital’s Out Patients Department (OPD) for the first time on February 22. The doctors advised her to get admitted to the hospital, but she did not agree and left. The woman, who was eight months pregnant, returned to the hospital again on February 26 when she had a severe pain in her belly and she was diagnosed with hepatitis. Since the hospital did not have the facility to do hepatitis tests, she was advised to get her tests done from a private lab outside the hospital. The tests were expensive and the woman could not afford the cost so she returned home without getting her tests done. Her condition deteriorated at night and she returned to the hospital once again. This time Dr Mehroosh was on duty and she allegedly mistreated her and told her to get out. The woman left the hospital’s OPD, but she didn’t get enough time to reach her home. In this situation, the nearest place she found to deliver her baby was a washroom inside a mosque at Jinnah Hospital.