Birth delay trauma compensated

Press, 28 July 1989, Page 7

Birth delay trauma compensated

PA Wellington A woman has been awarded accident compensation because she suffered emotional trauma when a hospital deliberately delayed, for five hours, the birth of a twin son who is now handicapped.

The woman said she knew that something was wrong, and was concerned for her unborn child, during the hours when hospital staff were managing her labour in what an appeal authority says was a negligent way. A decision in the 30-year-old woman’s favour was handed down by the Accident Compensation Appeal Authority last week. The amount had yet to be decided. The woman had already given birth to a healthy twin, but the second child was born with severe hyaline membrane disease. The child was seriously ill for several weeks and is now handicapped. The appeal authority heard that since the incident on Christmas Eve, 1983, the woman’s husband had left her because of her depression and his inability to cope with the child’s handicaps. The woman was also unable to work because of her grief. The corporation turned down two applications from the woman in 1988 because the child, not the mother, had suffered the injury from medical misadventure. Last Tuesday Judge Arthur Middleton found that the woman had suffered a medical misadventure surrounding the birth of her handicapped

son, and had experienced emotional trauma while the child was inside her. The Accident Compensation Act, 1982, says if a claimant suffers personal injury from medical misadventure, the mental consequences of the injury are compensatable, he said. The Judge said as well as the delay to the second child being intentional and negligent, raising the chance of the child being starved of air in the womb, an intravenous drip used on the woman was wrongly administered. The woman now had to live with the knowledge that the damage to her child was avoidable, he said. A Taumarunui Hospital spokesman said on Wednesday that the case had not involved the hospital because when the woman’s child was born, a doctor working on contract to the Taumarunui Hospital Board was running the maternity annex. Surgeon Superintendent Paul Malpass said the matter of the woman’s second' child had not been raised at board level because the whole thing was laid with the doctor. He could not disclose the name of the doctor.