Mum’s heartbreak: ‘They’ve destroyed me’
The mother of a newborn baby who was fatally administered the wrong gas at a Sydney hospital says the error has “destroyed” her family.
Sonya Ghanem delivered her baby boy John by caesarian earlier this month but when she asked to see her son, staff at Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital told her the little boy didn’t make it.
“I’m just feeling very hurt. Very hurt with all of this,” the shocked mother said.
“They said ‘Your baby didn’t make it. Your baby had died’.”
Mrs Ghanem and her husband Youseff had to leave the hospital without their son, and only found out weeks later he and another newborn were given nitrous oxide instead of oxygen in a hospital bungle.
The second baby was also given the laughing gas two weeks earlier and suffered a catastrophic brain injury. 7News understands the girl has been released from hospital but has been left seriously disabled and needing home care from a team of doctors and nurses.
The fatal mix up occurred when an oxygen outlet in the operating theatre was incorrectly installed with nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas, in July 2015.
But no one noticed the mix up until last Thursday when a paediatrician raised the alarm.
In that time, the two babies had been administered the incorrect gas with disastrous results.
The Ghanem family says they were only told of the error on Sunday, and now they want answers into why the error happened twice.
“I lost my baby. That’s very hard for me. What can I do?” Mr Ghanem said.
NSW Health Minister Jillian Skinner has come under fire over the handling of the case, attending the theatre just hours after issuing an apology to the families involved.
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BOC, which installed the gas in July 2015, says it is conducting a full internal enquiry.
But for the Ghanem family, it has come too late.
“They’ve destroyed me,” Mrs Ghanem said.
