Spanish
Guayaquil, Ecuador.- The Ecuadorian Prosecutor's Office announced this Sunday that it has initiated an ex officio preliminary investigation into the death of twelve newborns at the University Hospital of Guayaquil, the most populated city in the country.
As part of the process, the Public Ministry will receive statements from mothers, witnesses, and "other people who might know what happened," it indicated on its X social media account.
In addition, he indicated that he has urgently requested the medical records and additional information about the newborns from the directors of the public hospital, and that he would carry out the recognition of the scene at the medical center.
The opening of this fiscal investigation takes place after the Ecuadorian Ministry of Health reported on Saturday that twelve newborns had died at the University Hospital, without giving an exact date of the deaths, "due to multifactorial causes" derived "from their clinical condition complicated by their premature or very premature birth".
Two of them died after contracting the klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria producing carbapenemases, which is becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics.
The State portfolio reported these deaths after, days before, the digital media outlet La Posta indicated that eighteen newborns had died in the intensive care unit of the hospital last July due to an infection associated with healthcare.
According to the media, the hospital doctors, in the absence of medical supplies, would have used nasal cannulas (tubes to administer oxygen) in newborns that had already been used on other sick patients and that should have been discarded.
That would have caused the newborns to acquire the bacteria and subsequently die.
However, Health denied that eighteen newborns have died due to contamination in the intensive care unit of the hospital and ruled out that medical supplies are being reused in the medical center, although it did not refer to the lack of materials.
The Minister of Health, Jimmy Martin, announced on Saturday the beginning of an internal investigation process, fired the hospital manager, and ordered that psychological care be provided to the parents of the two newborns who died from the bacteria.
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This Sunday, the Agency for Quality Assurance of Health Services and Prepaid Medicine (Acess), a state institution in charge of controlling the quality of public and private health services, also said it would begin a quality audit and case analysis to clarify the twelve deaths. The case has caused great shock in the country and has mobilized the members of the Commission for the Protection of Girls, Boys and Adolescents of the National Assembly (Parliament), who have summoned the minister and those responsible for the medical center this Tuesday to give explanations about what happened.
