Woman dies while giving birth due to power blackout

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Mangochi District Hospital

A Malawian woman in her late 20’s in Mangochi died on Sunday after giving birth as she was bleeding heavily and the district’s hospital failed to assist her due to power failure at the institution.

Reports reaching Malawi24 show that the deceased – whose name has not yet been established – gave birth to a baby boy on Saturday and she was later taken to Mangochi district hospital as she heavily bleeding.

At the hospital, the woman was told that there was a problem with her uterus and it had to be removed. She was later taken to the theatre for surgery.

Mangochi District Hospital
Woman died in this hospital after a lengthy blackout.

In the process of the operation, there was a black out at the whole institution and the standby generator which is manual was not functioning to rescue the lady. The woman died within 10 minutes of the power failure.

Reacting to this, Mangochi district health officer, Dr. William Mpeno, said investigations are still underway to establish what really happened. However, other reports from some sources shows that this is not the first time for this to happen at the hospital.

The sources says the standby generator has much faults and there is only one person who knows it better but the problem is that this person is not always available at the hospital.

They said this could be proven by this development where it took almost ten minutes for the generator to start functioning and the woman died in the process.