TWO BABIES born in mid-November were finally reunited with their real parents yesterday after spending 40 days of their short lives being raised by the wrong parents due to a mix-up at the Makarios Hospital in Nicosia.
The shocking discovery was made last Friday, following DNA tests carried out at the request of the parents of one of the babies, who “suspected something was wrong”.
Ioannis Kounnis was born on November 13, and was admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the Makarios Hospital shortly afterwards, reportedly suffering from severe jaundice. Six days later, Katy Charalambous and her husband Sergis Kounnis took the baby they thought was their son home to Larnaca.
Charalambous said yesterday that “two or three days later, I looked at the discharge papers, and noticed that the baby’s blood group didn’t match mine or my husband’s.” She said they eventually decided that all three should have a DNA test, “because we suspected something was wrong”.
When the DNA test results were issued a week or so later, showing that the couple were not the baby’s natural parents, “it was a huge shock”, Charalambous said, adding: “What we felt is indescribable.”
The couple immediately contacted the Makarios NICU, which set the alarm bells ringing.
Meanwhile, Dimitris Sionnis and his wife had twins in mid-November, and one of them, Savvas, was admitted shortly afterwards to Makarios NICU with health problems, spending a week there before being discharged.
Sionnis said that he was phoned by the Makarios Hospital last Friday, and was asked to travel up with his family from Limassol, “at which point I realised there was some kind of problem”. A DNA test was carried out on the baby Sionnis and his wife had assumed was their son Savvas, the results of which were issued yesterday.
Makarios NICU head Andreas Hadjipetrou said yesterday that the “very, very serious matter resulted from a mistake”, and would be the subject of “a serious, responsible, investigation”. He suggested that, “without seeking to offer excuses”, the pressure involved in admitting a total of six babies to the NICU at the same time might have created the conditions for the nursing staff to have made the mistake.
He added that the existing protocols for monitoring babies in the NICU – wrist-tags, additional identifying information, computer records of the bed allocated to each one – had led to a quick initial identification of the second baby once the matter had come to light, and that “there was no cause for concern” over any other possible mix-ups.
Hadjipetrou said he phoned Health Minister Christos Patsalides on Sunday to brief him on the situation, and said that Patsalides recommended the involvement of the Attorney-general’s office, which would handle any legal case pursued by the police.
Justice Minister Loucas Louca said yesterday that police are pursuing their enquiries, “which are in the initial phase”, but he expected a swift conclusion. He added that it is important to establish very clearly what happened, because “if there was intent we are talking about one offence, and if it was negligence then we are talking about a different offence.”
Before the two couples left the Makarios Hospital yesterday lunchtime with their own children, both expressed their determination to pursue the matter through the courts so that, in the words of Kounnis, “the appropriate measures are taken to make sure what happened to us never happens again. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
On a positive note, the traumatic episode has created a special bond between the two families. Charalambous said that as far as she and her husband were concerned, they would always look on Savvas as “their” child in a certain way, a feeling she said was reciprocated by the other couple. “We all want to stay in touch, both parents and children”, she added.
