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BY MAE SINGUAY
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Monday, January 23, 2017
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BACOLOD City – A 21-year-old pregnant woman and the twins she was bearing died in the Corazon Locsin Montelibano Memorial Regional Hospital (CLMMRH) due to alleged hospital negligence.
An anticrime group operating under the Office of the Solicitor General asked the Department of Health (DOH) to investigate.
Jose Cesar Penario, father of Mary Joy Geronca, a resident of Barangay 10, told Task Force Crusaders his daughter was not immediately attended to while having emergency labor on Jan. 17.
“She’s (Geronca) asking for help for she cannot tolerate the pain anymore,” the task force’s national commander Romeo Maganto told DOH secretary Paulyn Jean Rosell-Ubial in a letter dated Jan. 23.
But a certain nurse told Geronca to wait for her turn, and the security guard asked her husband to leave the emergency room. She was left with no one assisting her, Maganto said, citing Penario’s complaint.
After 30 minutes, the medical staff called the husband, and the family saw Geronca being revived, said Maganto.
One of the staffers told them they do not know “if the twins are still alive or already dead inside the womb of the mother,” the task force leader said.
Dr. Julius Drilon, CLMMRH chief, denied the allegation. He stressed they did everything to save the lives of Geronca and her twins.
Geronca was pregnant for about 34 weeks already, Drilon said, citing hospital records.
She went to the CLMMRH’s Outpatient Department (OPD) for a prenatal checkup on Dec. 6 last year. Before that, she had prenatal services from a private lying-in clinic, hospital records showed.
On Dec. 18 last year, she went back to the OPD claiming she was having difficulty breathing.
Drilon said the medical staff examined her and advised that she be admitted, but her sister refused. The hospital prescribed medication and vitamins instead.
Around 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 16, Geronca was taken to the CLMMRH’s Emergency Room. She was already in an “arrested” condition and not breathing, said Drilon.
The medical staff tried to revive her, but she died at 8:25 a.m. the following day, said the chief of hospital.
Drilon said they felt bad about what happened. He said he sympathizes with the family, especially with the husband.
But to say the CLMMRH was negligent is inaccurate, he stressed. “Indi ina insakto nga statement kay wala namon ginpabay-an.”
“Acute pulmonary congestion and preeclampsia with severe features” killed Geronca, a death certificate issued by the Office of the Civil Registrar dated Jan. 20 showed./PN
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