The Andalusian public health service, the SAS, has been ordered to pay 50,000 euros in compensation for the death of a baby at the Motril hospital.

The Servicio Andaluz de Salud will have to compensate the parents of a baby who died just 15 hours after birth, thanks to the extraction method used; despite a birth labour that lasted 27 hours, no cesarean section birth was undertaken.

The lawyer acting for the family made it clear that this incident was a direct result of cuts to the public health system and that orders from the Ministry placed restrictions on the more costly cesarean intervention in favour of normal birth, resulting in the mother having to suffer 27 hours in labour and the resulting death of the baby.

The incident occurred on the 12th of February 2010 when the mother, 40 weeks into the pregnancy, was hospitalized via the Emergency Department (Urgencias), as waters had broken. She spent the whole afternoon, evening and night being taken in and out of the delivery room to control the childbirth.

Finally, at noon the next day, she was given an epidural for an induced birth. But it didn’t end there because at 19.00h, given the suffering to the fetus, the decision was taken to carry out a cesarean birth. During the previous 80 minutes they had used implements to try to extract the baby until the cesarean decision was taken.

The baby was born with damage to its shoulders and head and left lung. Fifteen hours later it died.

During the trial the SAS had claimed that the pregnancy had been normal, as had the first phase of labour and that it had been during the “expulsion that the well being of the fetus had suffered,” which had forced them to use urgent means; i.e. using espátulas de Thierry (tongs-like implement used in France and Spain to assist extraction).

A medical expert for the prosecution declared that as the mother was both obese and diabetic, the labour should not have been allowed to continue past twelve hours.

(News: Motril, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)