Departure from procedure to blame

The sex wrangle at the Sungai Petani Hospital last month occurred because the maternity ward’s Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) was not adhered to, said Health Ministry director-general Datuk Dr Mohd Ismail Merican.
He said it had been established that the issue began when a nurse asked the mother Resliana Manalu what sex her baby was.
“The mother told the nurse that all her other children were boys and that she thought the newly-born was also a boy.
“So the nurse duly wrote ‘baby boy’ in the forms.
“And it is based on what was written in the form that the parents are claiming that their new baby is a boy,” he said after attending the opening of the Sixth Ministry of Health Academy of Medicine Malaysia Scientific Meeting.
Dr Mohd Ismail said the nurse was not supposed to fill in the forms because that was the job of two other nurses who helped deliver the baby.
“The nurse who filled in the form didn’t see the gender of the baby, relying only on what the mother said,” he added.
Kedah state health director Datuk Dr Zahari Che Dan had confirmed that a nurse from the ward had mistakenly written the words “baby boy” when she was filling in the forms.
However, Resliana and her husband Azman Hassan are reported to be still insisting that a DNA test be carried out on the baby to confirm that she was theirs before they would take her home.
The 28-year-old mother said she stood by what she “saw with my own eyes” in the delivery room on Aug 27 when the baby was shown to her.
Source