Caldas da Rainha hospital is ‘in the news’ this morning, as it has repeatedly refused to issue a birth certificate for one of the many national babies born recently in ambulances as they hare towards an available maternity unit, or race around the country unable to find one.
Correio da Manhã is highlighting the story for one of its exposés on sister television channel, CMTV – and it serves to underscore thatfailings in maternity care do not stop once babies are born when this happens in ambulances, or other ‘unusual’ situations.
In this case of baby Matilde, CM explains the newborn was a social media ‘star’ (like many of the babies born on the nation’s roads): “The commander of Santarém volunteer firefighters welcomed the ‘miracle’ that his operatives had experienced: the birth of yet another child, in perfect health, on the way to a hospital. Photos circulated showing details of the birth, and what had happened…”
But now, seven months on, Matilde still does not ‘exist’ in the system. She has no birth certificate; she is not eligible for vaccination; she has no Social Security number: all because the hospital to which she and her mother were finally admitted has failed to issue one.
As CM explains, Matilde’s parents have done ‘everything they can’. They even hired a lawyer, to try and wrestle a birth certificate out of Caldas da Rainha hospital – but now, by law, the time limit for registering a newborn has been exceeded. Little Matilde is seven months old, and has nothing to prove her existence, even her nationality, according to Portuguese bureaucracy.
With luck, tonight’s CMTV focus on the situation will change all that. An exposé earlier this week by SIC Notícias on a doctor who allegedly ran an ‘early retirement’ scam, has already seen police start their investigation, and the doctor is the focus of an inquiry by the Order of Physicians. Thus, it is possible that Matilde’s state of legal limbo will soon be coming to an end. Certainly, CHEGA (currently Portugal’s second most voted political party) has labelled this a scandal, and a shameful one at that. But why all the fuss, in the first place?
CM explains today that the hospital did issue a paper, when mother and baby were discharged three days following their admission. It says that Matilde’s mother, Tatiana Antunes, “said the baby was born in the ambulance – as if there was the possibility that this could have been a lie”, says the paper. None of this tallies with the social media coverage, or the emotional post by the fire station commander. Thus, CMTV will take up the crusade later this evening, and baby Matilde may be a step closer to ‘existing’ on official documents.
Source material: Correio da Manhã
