By Alba à‡ela
A young expecting mother lost her life this week alongside her unborn baby, leaving behind two orphaned children and a bereaved family. After suffering an unexpected complication the woman first visited the maternity ward and was sent subsequently to tow more hospitals for various checks and analysis. When she finally made it back to the maternity hospital it was too late. Her spleen shattered she first lost the bay and then her own life. She was carried to three different hospitals in those dark night hours, most probably having to wait for a long time in each of them that the proper doctor or nurse appeared.
The cost of this tragedy extends far wider: a feeling of absurdity and betrayal hit the family, a feeling of fear and anger stroke the heart of every pregnant woman and every mother, a feeling of revolt that did not know in the beginning its direction. The emotional outflow of contempt first found the doctors who were judge responsible even before the basic examination procedures were complete. Then a more detailed account of the story emerged highlighting the real culprit of this dramatic and sad occurrence: the chaotic system of Albanian healthcare where often irresponsible human factors combine with inadequate material conditions to strike a death sentence to many. How come that in one of the key maternity hospitals in Albania there is not a correct combination of human resources and equipment that would allow for a pregnancy condition, however rare it might be, to be addressed within one building? How is it that a specialist doctor cannot travel to the sick woman but instead she has to be carried to them?
Everyone who knows a little bit about medicine, knows that death happens, that doctors might make mistakes, that sometimes it is impossible to fight a very difficult situation or development. However in the dark chaos that reign supreme in the Albanian hospitals it is increasingly difficult to know if it was predestined fate or the result of an ultimately faulty system. And what is this system? Sometimes it’s the corrupted lazy doctor, or a corrupted lazy nurse or a corrupted lazy guard. Sometimes it’s a medicine that lacks, sometimes the dirty floor, the moldy wall. Sometimes they all work in tandem. To blame one or the other in a separate way is naà¯ve. The one feds the other and the lack of control and responsibility over the entire healthcare sector feeds them all. Then you know that you need luck: if you are ill, pregnant or if your family needs any type of care you need luck. Or money. Often both.
Every developed or developing state in the world with the minimum concern about its population tries to carefully measure the statistics of maternal mortality and tries to lower it. This figure is a key indicator for assessing wider health and welfare conditions and is cited in all international reports about demography. Of course the health of an expecting mother is and should be an ultimate priority for every state healthcare system. Both pregnancy and birth are complex, often difficult and carry significant life risks for both mother and baby due to both expected and sudden complications. The quality of the equipment used to measure her, the frequency of the necessary visits, the integrity of the doctors assisting her, they all affect the successful completion for a successful and healthy pregnancy. Additionally for every complications, doctors have or should have detailed protocols that help them asses and solve the situation. We cannot blame doctors if their conditions don’t allow for them to carry out their profession, if the procedures and coping mechanism for emergencies. Sadly, and as we have seen fatally, instead of reflecting on this, those responsible for taking care of the healthcare system are too busy issuing excuses, ping ponging the blame and preparing the next public-private partnership.
