The woman called Uwajamahoro Nadine explained that she was given an appointment by the doctor to give birth but she was abandoned and the child was born with a severe disability.
After realizing that the child is disabled, she started treating him in various hospitals including CHUK and CARAES Ndera and was told that the child’s brain has rotted, so he cannot recover.
CHUK Hospital told her that the baby may have had a problem at birth because in the examination that was done, it showed that there are no problems with our reproductive cells.
She also went to the King Faisal Hospital where they told him that the child’s brain has a problem.
After realizing that the child had these problems due to abandonment, she went to the La Croix du Sud hospital where she gave birth to find a solution to the problem that his child had, or to seek more treatment but it made him angry.
Uwajamahoro decided to go to the courts to ensure that he would receive justice even though he lost his case in the High Court of Gasabo, the Children and Family Court.
Uwajamahoro sued the court for damages arising from the consequences of the child’s birth due to lack of proper care resulting in permanent disability.
When the date of delivery arrived, like others who have a ‘rendez-vous’, this mother went to the doctor but there was no doctor to take care of her because the doctor was supposed to be working alone.
She explained that she arrived at the hospital in the morning and they kept her awake, until she gave birth in the evening.
After that, the surgeon gave him a nurse who took care of him and prepared him for the operation, put on a tube and injected him with drugs intended for those who are going to have an operation.
Although he was injected with the medicine, he did not find a surgeon, which caused the child to come to the buttocks.
The birth of the child was difficult because it required the nurses to use a ‘vantouse’ to pull him and the surgeon who had to reach him had already given birth.
The baby started crying after 20 minutes and shortly after birth it started to turn purple in color.
Uwajamahoro told the Court that he and the child stayed in the hospital for one day and were immediately discharged because the hospital had found out that he had a problem.
The lawyer in the case, Me Matimbano Barton, told the court that the hospital should be held responsible for the negligence that caused the child to become disabled.
Me Muhozi Paulin and Murasira Appolinaire defended the hospital, they showed that there was no negligence, that the hospital is missing a midwife and that there is no confirmation that the child’s problems were caused during the birth.
The court then ordered a team of three doctors from the King Faisal Hospital, who are conducting an examination to identify the child’s illness and its cause.
The expert’s report revealed that the child has ‘Complicated spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy’, which is associated with leg and arm paralysis, paralysis resulting from the brain’s small size, dysfunction and an enlarged cerebral cortex. although its size is small.
Those doctors in front of the court showed that the disease can be self-inflicted or there is a reason such as during the birth of the child or after birth.
They said they saw the baby when she was seven months old so they are not sure what caused him to be sick.
They explained that it can be caused by many reasons, including the fact that the child was born with failure, lack of air and blood or a disease resulting from the transformation of the connective tissue.
The court also summoned the person who monitored the child’s mother before she gave birth and confirmed that she received him but was not the one who gave birth to him.
He said that although he had given her a surgery plan, he came to her with doctors who agreed that she would give birth safely.
He said that not only are you going to be operated on, but also a woman who has had a good baby has been operated on, and that is what happened to Uwajamahoro.
The doctor told the court that the medicine they gave the woman was not meant for those who are going to have surgery, but it is a medicine that has been given to her.
He said that the child was not pulled by the vacuum as the mother says because it was not used by nurses and asked for a specialist.
Although he reached the mother who had already given birth, he said that the child did not have any problems during the birth and they made a report that the child and the mother were still alive after they returned home.
After considering all of this, the court concluded that there was no evidence to support the claim that the hospital was negligent or that the child’s problem was caused at birth.
It confirmed that the complaint filed by Uwajamahoro Nadine on behalf of her child was unfounded.
The court ordered that Uwajamahoro must pay La Croix du Sud attorney’s fees in the amount of 500 thousand Frw.
Uwajamahoro is not happy with the outcome of the case and decides to appeal the decision to the High Court, so the hearing is scheduled for March 12, 2024.
Apart from the fact that it is still in the courts, after the matter was brought to the attention of President Paul Kagame, different institutions started to follow it.
