A Waikato District Health Board member wants to know why the board did not know aboutthe death of a baby at Waikato Hospital until the Herald broke the story yesterday.
Dave Macpherson said the board was not advised of "this terrible case" which happened in September last year - not December as previously stated - and he was now concerned there would be other serious cases the board did not know about.
"Had we been informed that the reason the baby died was due to a lack of delivery suites, after the hospital 'bumped' the planned C-section to cater for an acute case, we would have had the chance to address this problem earlier," Macpherson said.
After the Herald revealed the tragedy last night, Macpherson said he had received allegations from the medical community that it was not the first, and that hospital managers had stopped using a "risk alert" system that could have highlighted the risk of the delayed C-section after they began receiving too many high-risk notifications.
"The women's health section of Waikato Hospital has staff that work very hard on behalf of their patients, but has had multiple management changes in the recent past."