Pregnant woman jumps to her death at Guyana hospital

The George­town Pub­lic Hos­pi­tal (GH­PC) in Guyana has con­firmed that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been launched in­to the death of a 22-year-old preg­nant woman, who is re­port­ed to have jumped to her death from a win­dow of the fe­male med­ical ward on the third floor of the build­ing.

The au­thor­i­ties said that Maris­sa East­man, of La Par­faite Har­monie, West Bank De­mer­ara, Re­gion Three (Es­se­qui­bo Is­lands-West De­mer­ara), who was six months preg­nant, jumped to her death on Sun­day evening.

She had been ad­mit­ted to the hos­pi­tal ear­li­er on Sun­day af­ter rel­a­tives be­came con­cerned about what they de­scribed as her in­creas­ing­ly ab­nor­mal be­hav­iour.

In a state­ment, the GPHC said that it is con­duct­ing a full in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion. It re­vealed that when the woman was ad­mit­ted, a psy­chi­atric eval­u­a­tion was done, but there were no psy­chot­ic symp­toms or sui­ci­dal thoughts iden­ti­fied.

The GPHC has said that as part of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion process, the hos­pi­tal will al­so re­view ex­ist­ing pro­to­cols re­lat­ed to pa­tient ob­ser­va­tion and men­tal health mon­i­tor­ing, in­clud­ing sui­cide watch poli­cies, to iden­ti­fy any ar­eas for strength­en­ing pa­tient safe­ty.

The GPHC said it has of­fered psy­cho-so­cial and psy­chi­atric sup­port to both rel­a­tives and staff af­fect­ed by the in­ci­dent.

But rel­a­tives have told lo­cal me­dia out­lets that they are strug­gling to un­der­stand how a pa­tient dis­play­ing clear psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tress was able to leave her bed un­ac­com­pa­nied, ac­cess a win­dow, and al­leged­ly jump from such a height with­out in­ter­ven­tion.

Po­lice have since launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter. —GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana (CMC)