Stillborn baby’s cremation tomorrow

Port-of-Spain: Baby Izabelle Ragoonath, named posthumously by dad Vishnu Ragoonath is expected to be cremated tomorrow.

The autopsy performed today revealed a "maceration" and placental insufficiency, which one doctor explained meant the stillbirth's body was "not whole".

She said the level of poisoning in the mother was another indication that the baby may have been dead for several days. Her findings were corroborated by another medical personnel on call the on Sunday night at the Mount Hope Medical Sciences Complex when Chang-Ragoonath was first brought in.

"It is a fact that the baby was dead two days before she came to the hospital," he said.

The funeral plans for baby Izabelle are taking place amid the continued controversy over not only her death and her mother's, Michelle Chang-Ragoonath, comatose state. Chang-Ragoonath remained unconscious up to late yesterday, hooked up to a life support machine since Sunday.

The blame game continued to play out between the mother's private doctor, Dr Prakashbahn Persad and the Mount Hope Medical Sciences Complex  to determine how long the dead baby was allowed to remain in the mother which led to the severe level of sepsis that left her in a coma.
Relatives of the patient said the doctor was not being honest when he said he performed an ultrasound on Sunday.

"We were with her for the 30 minutes she was there and she did not have an ultrasound," they say.

When Caribbean Trakker spoke with Persad, he said he was in touch with both the patients family and her doctors, but family members deny this too.

"Since Sunday everyone trying to contact him and we were not getting through," one female relative said.

As it stands now, the family is focusing in the funeral arrangements for baby Izabelle and praying for the health of Chang-Ragoonath, but they have not ruled out taking the legal route, if only to ensure that this situation does not happen to anyone else.