Tanah Merah hospital to face stern action if found negligent in baby snatching

The Health Ministry will take stern action against the director and officers of Tanah Merah Hospital, Kelantan if there was negligence which resulted in the abduction of a baby girl under their care.

Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr S. Subramaniam said detailed investigations were still being carried out including identifying weaknesses despite the establishment of its standard operating procedure (SOP).

"The ministry will tighten further the SOP for bringing babies out of the ward in the effort to ensure such incident does not recur.

"The matter should not have happened and it revealed weaknesses in the system as it happened without being suspected by security guards and nurses on duty," he told reporters after the opening of the Wanita MIC Election Machinery and Leadership Programme here Friday.

He said the ministry had ordered the Tanah Merah hospital director to identity the weaknesses to ensure all security measures were adhered to.

"How can an outsider enter, take the baby and leave, this is one matter we must scrutinise to ensure it does not happen again," he said.

In the incident on Tuesday, the father of a five-day-old baby girl Mohd Ihtisyamuddin Mohd Ashri, 29, found his baby missing at 9 pm when he went the hospital to check up his second child.

After a report was lodged, police nabbed a couple in their mid 30's and found the baby at midnight in a house in Selising, Pasir Puteh, Kelantan. -- Bernama