City hospital swops babies

2006-10-20 07:53

Ilse Fredericks

Cape Town - A Goodwood father on Thursday described his horror after realising his child had been swopped with another at a city hospital.

Sean Greyling said he turned cold when he looked at the face of the newborn baby in a crib at N1 City hospital and realised the baby wasn't the one his wife had given birth to two hours earlier.

After a panic-stricken search the baby was found with another mother who'd given birth on the same day.

Greyling and his wife Eloise fear that their baby, Sonique, might have HIV if the other woman, who could be HIV-positive, breastfed her.

"A few weeks ago I saw the story of a mother whose baby had been swopped and who was breastfed by another woman on Carte Blanche," said Greyling.

"The other woman had HIV and they feared that their baby might also have contracted the virus.

"We don't know if the other mother breastfed our baby and whether she might be sick."

Anton van Wyk, manager of the hospital, said they were thankful that the mistake was realised so soon.

"Sonique wasn't breastfed by the other mother," he said. "It is the first time in the hospital's history that something like this happened, but it was put right without any harm being done."

Greyling said Sonique was born at 13:40 on Wednesday.

He accompanied the nurse to weigh the baby and afterwards returned to his wife's room with the baby.

The nurse later fetched the baby while Greyling remained with his wife.

"She returned the baby after a while and left it in the crib," said Greyling. "I turned around to take the baby out of the crib and realised it was not my child."

Greyling immediately went searching for the nurse and told her that the wrong baby had been put in the crib.

"She said my child was with another woman. I wanted to fetch my child, but wasn't allowed to enter the other woman's room."

The baby was returned to her parents within a few minutes.

Mrs Greyling was still recuperating in hospital.

Greyling said he wanted answers from the hospital about how the babies had been swopped and whether his child had been breastfed by the other woman.

"I want tests to be done. The hospital gave me a letter confirming that they'd swopped the babies.

"It costs a lot of money to have a baby, and the incident was caused by negligence."

Van Wyk said the hospital was embarrassed by the incident and it would be investigated.

- Die Burger