Pregnant woman refused by 18 hospitals for treatment, later dies

A pregnant woman who had lost consciousness during delivery died after 18 hospitals refused to accept her as their beds were full, an official of a Nara Prefecture hospital said Tuesday.

Mika Takasaki, 32, fell into a coma early on Aug 8 while delivering at a town-run hospital in Oyodo, Nara. The hospital asked several other hospitals to accept her as it could not deal with the situation, but its request was rejected by 18 hospitals.

It took some six hours for the patient to be finally accepted by a state-run hospital in Osaka, where she underwent an emergency operation for bleeding in her brain and Caesarean section.

While successfully giving birth to a boy, Takasaki died Aug 16 without having recovered consciousness.

Her husband Shinsuke Takasaki, 24, held a press conference in Nara Prefecture on Tuesday to call for an improvement in the system of transferring pregnant women.

"I think pregnant women are worried about such insufficiencies of hospitals," he said as he wiped his tears. "I want hospitals to ensure safe delivery."

According to the Nara prefectural government, about 30% of pregnant women who need emergency or high-quality treatment are transferred to hospitals outside the prefecture.

The doctor in charge of Takasaki at the initial hospital diagnosed her condition as having convulsion during delivery, which cannot be treated there, and asked the prefectural-run Nara Medical University Hospital to accept her. But the hospital refused, saying all its beds were full.

The Nara Medical University Hospital looked for other hospitals and Takasaki was finally accepted by the National Cardiovascular Center in Suita, Osaka Prefecture, at around 6 a.m. on Aug 8.

The doctor at the Oyodo hospital did not conduct a computer tomography even though another doctor referred to the possibility of abnormality in Takasaki's brain while they were looking for another hospital to transfer her, according to the hospital official.

The official has admitted that the hospital "made a mistake in judging her condition as a result."