Newborn dies after doctors get into fight

A NEWBORN died after two doctors scuffled while the mother was in labour and Brazilian authorities are investigating whether the delivery room fight caused the death or contributed to it.

The two doctors were fired by the public hospital in the small city of Ivinhema near the border with Paraguay, but investigators have not determined whether the fight played a role in the death, Ivinhema Health Secretary Sonia Garcao said.

Garcao would not comment on what caused the fight. But Brazil’s Globo TV said witnesses reported one doctor got angry because the other doctor was summoned to deliver the baby for 32-year-old Gislaine de Matos Rodrigues even though he was not scheduled to be on duty.

Witnesses said the baby died of asphyxiation following complications, Globo TV reported. Neither Garcao nor Globo TV provided further details about how the asphyxiation happened.

One of the doctors admitted to Globo TV there was a fight in the delivery room, but blamed his colleague.

“I didn’t get in a fight with him,” said Dr Sinomar Ricardo. “He got into a fight with me.”

The network said it was unable to interview the second doctor.

Rodrigues, a seamstress, said she was terrified when the fight broke out. “I asked them to stop fighting and help me,” she told Globo TV. “One of the nurses came to protect me and console me.”

A third doctor took over the delivery after hospital security guards removed the fighting doctors, Rodrigues said.

She said her baby girl was dead upon delivery.

Reports say the two men at first started to argue, and then to fight.

“It was a big fight. They ended up rolling around on the floor and my wife was screaming for them to stop,” said the woman’s husband, Gilberto Melo Cabreira, quoted by the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper.

“I don’t want to make accusations,” her husband said.

“But I can testify to one thing – up to the birth my daughter was in full health.”

Police said they will investigate, and the regional body that oversees doctors in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul also launched a probe.

The two doctors were given 10 days to report their versions of what happened in the hospital’s delivery room.

The autopsy report on the baby’s death is expected to be released next week.