New born dies as nurse leaves mom unattended as her shift gets over

AGRA: In a bizarre case of negligence at District Hospital Mainpuri, a new born baby died on Sunday evening after falling into a bucket in the labour room when the nurse failed to attend to the delivering mother, as her duty hours were over.
According to sources the child was born at about 8.05 PM and the nurse, Saroj, whose shift had ended 5 minutes earlier, was getting ready to leave, unmindful of the condition of the woman, Shivani Srivastava (27), who was lying on the delivery table.Sources said Saroj had finished attending to another woman who had delivered a baby little earlier but decided not to attend to Shivani as her duty time had ended.
Another nurse, Susheela Sharma, who was to replace Saroj, arrived late but by then Shivani delivered the baby boy, which fell into the bucket kept close to delivery table for collecting placenta and umbilical cord, and died.
Shivani’s brother in law, Manish Srivastava, said the family was shocked at the sheer negligence of the nurse and the hospital. He said, “all the excitement of having the first baby in the family had turned into a saddening affair and both my brother and sister-in-law are in a state of shock”.
He said Shivani was admitted to the hospital at about 1 PM on Sunday and was taken to the labour room around 7.30 PM. He wondered how a nurse could fail to check on a patient who was delivering a baby.
When contacted, chief medical surgeon, Dr Nimmi Begum, admitted to the negligence but claimed that Saroj had not left the labour room. “The baby came out unexpectedly and before Saroj could react, he fell into the bucket”, she said adding that Saroj had been shifted from the labour room to the general ward.
Interestingly, Dr Begum claimed that she couldn’t suspend Saroj for the negligence, as they were already short-staffed. She said she would be send a detailed report about the incident to the Chief Medical Officer for further action in the case.