Sungai Petani Hospital apologises to baby’s parents

The Sungai Petani Hospital has apologised to the parents of a baby born last Wednesday over an error in not ascertaining the infant's sex.
Hospital director Dr Haris Fadzilah Che Hashim, who personally apologised to Ahmad Hassan, 58, and Fazrina Md Daud, 31, said the hospital paediatric consultant had confirmed that the baby was a girl.
“The hospital had merely wanted to confirm the matter to be completely certain that the baby is a girl.
“We deeply regret such a miscommunication and hope such an incident will not recur in the future,” he said in an interview yesterday.
Ahmad, a businessman, said he met up with Dr Haris Fadzilah, who had listened to his views on the matter and had finally agreed to put the matter to rest by amending the baby's gender, which was stated as “ambiguous” on the birth registration form.
Ahmad said his wife, who went through a traumatic time over the incident for the past six days, was happy with the hospital's clarification.
Fazrina had given birth to a 2.75kg baby at 9.25am via a caesarean section at the hospital last Wednesday.
“I was alert throughout the surgery as I was given an epidural and not general anaesthesia. She (the baby) was shown to me and I could tell that she is a girl,” she said in a telephone interview yesterday.
Ahmad and Fazrina said they were thankful to Allah as the confusion had been cleared and that they could now have a proper birth certificate issued at the National Registration Department here for their baby, whom the will name Nur Nabilah, which means “ray of enlightenment.”
The incident was the third involving newborns to have occurred in three months at Sungai Petani Hospital.
In the first incident, a newborn was slipped out of a ward by a nurse. The second incident involved a newborn who was allegedly “swapped” when a nurse had wrongly filled up a form with the word “boy” instead of girl.
In Alor Star, the Kedah Health Department and Sungai Petani Hospital have been told to work hard to regain public trust after their image was tarnished by the recent cases involving babies.
Acting Kedah Mentri Besar Datuk Mahdzir Khalid said they could conduct programmes, including seminars and talks for the public.
“The most important thing is they (the hospital) must get the people’s confidence to send expectant mothers to deliver babies at the hospital,” he said.
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