LARNACA General Hospital doctors told a grieving patient to post her miscarried foetus to Nicosia for tests via Akis Express last week, because they had no system for doing it themselves.
Sophia Tsitsinakis, 20, miscarried last Sunday – 14 weeks into her pregnancy – following three prior visits to the hospital, during which she had reported back and stomach pains to doctors, who prescribed her vitamins.
It is now thought that a urinary tract infection caused her membranes to break, prompting early labour and miscarriage.
On Monday, doctors asked Tsitsinakis if she wanted to send the foetus to Nicosia for tests, and when she agreed, they boxed the foetus and told her to send it via Akis Express, because they could not wait until their weekly delivery on Friday.
One of Ttistsinakis’ doctors, Stavros Zarkadas, confirmed the incident, saying that it was necessary to ask her to post the foetus herself because the hospital only sent samples to Nicosia once a week, on a Friday.
“In cases where couples want to study the chromosomes, we send it to Nicosia. (Larnaca) hospital only takes samples to Nicosia on Friday, and if the foetus was kept until then it would not have been possible to perform the test,” Zarkadas said.
Asked why they didn’t arrange more than one collection day a week for such situations, Zarkadas said: “I don’t make the rules, I only follow them.”
This does not seem to be the first occasion this has happened. Referring to the practice of giving miscarried foetuses to mothers to post, another Larnaca General employee told the Cyprus Mail “We usually do that.”
The incident has left Tsitsinakis distraught and her mother, Pepina Tsitsinakis, outraged.
“They were not at all sympathetic. One doctor said ‘she is only 20 and she can have more children’ and on departing from the hospital – besides all the grief my daughter was already going through – she was handed a box with her dead foetus to take to Akis Express… Unbelievable!”
She added: “It is not about the cost, if we could have sent it from the hospital then we would have done that.”
Tragically, it seems the whole incident could have been avoided had doctors prescribed antibiotics to cure an infection that was discovered two days after the miscarriage when Tsitsinakis returned to the hospital in pain.
The Sunday Mail was unable to obtain a health ministry response, despite repeated calls to medical services director, Stelios Gregoriou.
