{"id":64753,"date":"2025-08-13T09:41:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T09:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/64753\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T09:41:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T09:41:09","slug":"twelve-newborns-die-in-a-public-hospital-in-ecuador-they-took-him-away-like-trash-international","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/64753\/","title":{"rendered":"Twelve newborns die in a public hospital in Ecuador: \u2018They took him away like trash\u2019 | International"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twelve babies have died at Guayaquil University Hospital since July 23, when the hospital\u2019s authorities issued an epidemiological alert. The Ecuadorian Ministry of Health attributed the deaths to \u201cmultifactorial\u201d causes. According to the institution, most of the deaths were premature newborns in complicated clinical condition. However, it admitted that two of them contracted a hospital-acquired infection caused by the carbapenemase-producing bacterium Klebsiellapneumoniae<\/a>, whose increasing resistance to antibiotics makes it a serious threat and which spreads easily in hospitals with inadequate biosafety protocols.<\/p>\n

Joselyn, one of the affected mothers, can\u2019t stop reliving in her head the exact moment she handed her four-day-old son to a nurse at University Hospital, a center specializing in pediatrics. It was dawn on August 3, and the baby had begun to turn yellow. \u201cIn my desperation, I didn\u2019t even check if the equipment was working. They took me out of the room, and a while later, they came out to tell me he had died from high bilirubin,\u201d she says, her voice breaking. Her son had jaundice, a common condition in newborns that is rarely fatal if treated early.<\/p>\n

\"GlovesGloves used by Joselyn’s son.VICENTE GAIBOR<\/p>\n

The baby had been born at another health center, one that only performed natural births because there were no supplies for cesarean sections<\/a>. \u201cHe weighed 3.2 kilograms, was 50 centimeters long, and had a pinkish tint. He was fine,\u201d Joselyn recalls. No one explained whether \u00c1ngel was born with jaundice or if it developed in the following days, because at the health center where he was born, he was never seen by a pediatrician or given an exam. \u201cI was with the baby the whole time, and a pediatrician didn\u2019t even come to discharge us, but it\u2019s very strange that they even wrote down his blood type on the paperwork, without doing any tests,\u201d the mother explains.<\/p>\n

After being informed of her child\u2019s death, she was sent to complete the paperwork to retrieve the body. While she was waiting for someone to sign the documents, the hospital notified the emergency services that the baby\u2019s body had been abandoned. When she returned, she found a police morgue employee collecting the body. \u201cI begged him not to take it, that I was there, that they had delayed the process because there was no one in admissions to stamp the paperwork, but they took it anyway. As if it were trash,\u201d Joselyn recounts, her throat tight. It took several hours to retrieve it. \u201cThey had opened it to perform an autopsy on my little angel.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Prosecutor\u2019s Office has opened a criminal investigation, and the Ombudsman\u2019s Office has launched its own inquiry. Health Minister Jimmy Martin \u2014 the fifth appointed by President Daniel Noboa<\/a> \u2014 requested the resignation of the hospital manager and ordered a medical audit. He also ordered psychological care for family members, but only for the parents of the two babies who died from the bacteria, excluding the rest of the affected families.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe medical history for Joselyn’s son.VICENTE GAIBOR<\/p>\n

The case has revealed the magnitude of a healthcare system on the brink of collapse. The Guayas Medical Association has asked President Noboa to declare a state of emergency in the healthcare system, warning of critical shortages of supplies and medications, especially in intensive care units. Since taking office, the government has cut more than $400 million from the healthcare budget, exacerbating a public network already weakened by the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Noboa has not yet commented on the deaths. He has preferred to focus his attention on a demonstration he called against the Constitutional Court, which will take place on Tuesday, August 12. Members of his political party have requested permission to accompany him to demonstrate, on the same day that the National Assembly\u2019s Children\u2019s Commission summoned the Minister of Health to give an account of the tragedy of the 12 dead babies at the University Hospital of Guayaquil.<\/p>\n

Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a> to get more English-language news coverage from EL PA\u00cdS USA Edition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twelve babies have died at Guayaquil University Hospital since July 23, when the hospital\u2019s authorities issued an epidemiological…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[64,63,51760,25196,137,500],"class_list":["post-64753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-noboa","tag-ecuador","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}