An anti-acne prescription proved costly for a would-be-mom, when she was forced to have an abortion as a result of its side effects.
Sarah Sharma of Sawtry near Peterborough, United Kingdom was forced to give birth to a still-baby when a powerful acne medicine prescribed at Peterborough City Hospital for her resulted in a massive abnormalities in Indiya, their baby-to-be-born. The prescription, which was not suitable for pregnant women, was given by mistake to 27-year-old Sarah as the hospital staff failed to make sure whether she was pregnant before prescribing the drug.
Sarah was told at her 20-week-scan that her would-have-been-baby Indiya was suffering from serious heart and nervous system abnormalities and would not survive after birth. After giving still-birth to Indiya at Hinchingbrook, Sarah and her husband confirmed from a post-mortem examination after a long wait that the baby had died of foetal isotretinoin syndrome, caused by the side effects of the anti-acne prescription.
Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust admitted that if they had followed some basic procedure before the drug prescription the death of Indiya in 2012 could have been prevented. Sarah and her husband Varun (25) have accepted an unrevealed settlement from the hospital authorities and donated part of it to Hinchingbrooke Hospital whether Indiya was aborted and Sarah's second daughter Asha was born.
The couple made the incident public a year after it happened as they don't want others to experience the pain they faced.
"It has been an incredibly difficult year for us. Losing Indiya was devastating, but to find out that her condition, and subsequent death, could have been prevented is almost unbearable. I am pleased that the Trust has now admitted that they made mistakes, but what we really want are assurances that no-one else will have to go through what we did," Sarah said in an interview with Cambridge News.
