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Hospital accused of taking dead newborn 'hostage' over bill

Source
Jakarta Globe - February 10, 2010

An East Java hospital has been accused of denying a family the right to take home and bury the body of their deceased newborn baby because the infant's parents could not meet their medical expenses.

Nurul Istiqoma gave birth to a baby at Waluyo Jati Kraksaan Hospital, in Probolinggo, East Java on Saturday. Prematurely born, the baby had to undergo surgery because it was suffering from atresia oesophagus, which is a congenital medical condition where the oesophagus does not connect normally to the stomach. The baby's condition continued to deteriorate after the surgery and it died on Tuesday morning.

However, Nurul and her husband, Abdul Karim, told RCTI that they were not allowed to take their baby's body home for a funeral. "The hospital kept our baby because we couldn't pay the bill," Abdul said.

The bill was Rp 1.95 million ($208) but Karim only had Rp 950,000. He promised the hospital that he would pay the rest of the bill later, but staff refused his request. He went home to try and obtain loans, but to no avail.

On Tuesday afternoon, around eight hours after the baby died, Karim and Nurul said they could finally could take the body home by paying Rp 950,000 and leaving Karim's driver's license at the hospital.

The hospital's director, Sulis Astutik, denied that the hospital kept the baby for administrative reasons. She said hospital staff could not contact the baby's parents because they were not at the hospital when the baby was pronounced dead.

"We didn't take the baby hostage because they couldn't pay the bill, but we waited for the family to take the baby home," Sulis said.

Cases of mothers and babies being stopped from leaving hospitals because they could not meet their medical expenses are not uncommon in Indonesia.

Indonesian Corruption Watch found in January this year that some hospitals were still discriminating against poor families who were entitled to free medical treatment.

Ratna Kusumaningsih, the watchdog group's public health researcher, said at the time that the findings were part of a recently concluded 2009 survey at five private and 18 state-owned hospitals in Greater Jakarta carried out by the group.

"Among the findings, we discovered that some hospitals still charge patients or ask for a down payment even though they are Jamkesmas [state health insurance] card holders," Ratna said.

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