Botched surgery leaves stillborn baby's head inside mother's womb in Pakistan

A stillborn baby's head was left inside its mother's womb after a botched surgery at a rural health centre (RHC) in Pakistan's Sindh province last week.

The botched operation was conducted at the hospital in Tharparkar district when a woman was brought in to deliver her stillborn baby who was in a breech or in a bottom-down position.

The inexperienced staff at the local hospital separated the baby's torso from its head and referred her to a hospital 50 miles away after they could not remove its head from the mother's uterus, a top health official of Sindh province told VICE.

The surgery was performed without a gynaecologist or female staff present at the rural health centre, according to local media reports. The botched surgery put the woman's life at risk as the woman's family had to take her to different hospitals before she could finally be treated.

The hospital she was referred to the second time did not have adequate facilities to treat her. She was then sent to another hospital in Hyderabad city, nearly 134 miles away.

The doctors at the Liaquat University of Medical & Health Sciences (LUH) in Hyderabad carried out surgery on the woman and saved her life. The mother is now out of danger.

"The woman's life has been saved. The baby's buttocks and legs were fully developed, but unfortunately it was a dead breech baby," Dr Raheel Sikandar told local publications.

The incident has forced the Sindh government to form a medical inquiry board to carry out an investigation.

The committee has also been tasked to look into reports that claimed that the members of the public at LUH took videos and photos of the woman while she was lying unconscious on a stretcher.

According to UNICEF, Pakistan has the highest infant mortality rate in South Asia. It reported 54 infant deaths per 1,000 live births. The infant mortality rate in Pakistan is twice as high as in India.