Turned away, turned up dead...

On October 24th, in Tokyo, Japan, one of the most industrialized and modern cities in one of the most most technologically and economically advanced nations of the world, a woman died. A woman dying is not odd, nor out of place for Tokyo, or any other place in the world, but it is the circumstances in which this woman met her death that are truly sad.

A pregnant woman went to the hospital. She was complaining of headaches as well as vomiting. The first hospital she went to, and would later be admitted to, Metropolitan Bokuto Hospital, claimed that initially they could not admit her because there was only one doctor on duty at the time. She would get the same reply from the next six hospitals she would go to.

After she was finally admitted, it was decided that the woman's child should be removed via Caesarean section. After the child was safely removed, the woman then entered brain surgery to try and remedy her illness, where she died of a brain hemorrhage.

Now, we do not know that if she had been admitted sooner, she would have lived, but when hospitals in one of the richest cities in the world suffer from understaffing, there is something larger here that is quite wrong. I can only hope that the deceased mother's child has a good life and never learns of the fate of its mother.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/10/24/Turned_away_pregnant_woman_dies/UPI-12561224821036/