A Sydney couple has told of their devastation after a major Sydney hospital mistakenly cremated their stillborn daughter.
Stella Pirko and Anthony Meyers, requested the Liverpool Hospital carry out an autopsy and genetic testing on their baby Krystal Rose, who was born at 28 weeks.
Their request was never followed through after the paperwork went missing and a lack of funding left no-one responsible for the hospital mortuary.
When they learned their daughter had been cremated with no autopsy, Stella told Nine News they went into shock.
“We trusted them to do their jobs – to find out what happened to our baby. We cannot fathom how this happened,” she said.
“The baby was down in the storage room, no one cared, no one did anything,” said Anthony.
Their daughter was left in the mortuary for nine days, before she was mistakenly released to the funeral home for cremation in October last year.
Stella was also shocked when she discovered much later that the doctor who authorised the cremation also handled the couple’s request for follow up testing.
The papers were all signed on the same day as their daughter’s birth.
“Why did he authorise the cremation if he knew the post mortem wasn’t done?” she said.
Stella received a call from the Feto-Maternal Unit consultant after he became aware that the post-mortem was not performed. He wanted to clarify whether she’d given consent for the procedure. She was so distraught by the call, she was unable to speak.
It was then an investigation found that their baby had been cremated without an autopsy.
It’s not the first time this kind of mistake has happened. It emerged last year that two babies had been mistakenly cremated by Royal North Shore Hospital in separate cases in 2015 and 2012.
Our hearts break for the family.
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- 17 Oct 2017
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- 28 Feb 2017
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- 27 Feb 2017
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- 27 Feb 2017
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- 27 Feb 2017
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