It’s not ‘Baby Pansy’
THE Ministry of Health is moving to negotiate a settlement with Pansy Campbell and Roy McLean after DNA tests on the bodies of five more babies confirmed that none of them was the couple’s missing infant.
“The ministry’s permanent secretary, Grace Allen-Young, has written to the attorney-general requesting that a meeting be held with (the couple’s) lawyers to negotiate a settlement,” the ministry said in a news release yesterday.
‘Baby Pansy’, the couple’s two-pound premature infant, has been missing since last September. The health ministry and officials at the Mandeville Hospital, where the child was being treated for Respiratory Distress Syndrome, believe that the child died on September 1, 2002 and was later transferred to Lyn’s Funeral Home.
However, the Clarendon couple have adamantly insisted, all along, that their child is still missing, spurring the RJR Group to pay for the first DNA test in June of this year. After that test came back negative, health officials identified five other babies’ bodies that they thought could possibly be ‘Baby Pansy’. But those tests have now turned up negative too.
“DNA tests conducted on the bodies of five other babies received at Lyn’s Funeral Home during and after the first week of September 2002 have revealed that none of the babies is that of Pansy Campbell,” the ministry said yesterday.
From as far back as June 11, Health minister John Junor had indicated, in an interview with the Observer, that a settlement appeared to be the way to go, after preliminary investigations showed that there had been errors in the tagging procedure that likely led to a mix-up of bodies.
Campbell and McLean have, in the past, hinted at the possibility of a lawsuit; but the Observer was unable to make contact with them, or their attorney, Dwight Reece, yesterday to get their reaction to the latest development.
And while the health ministry appears convinced that “Baby Pansy” had died, they did not say where the body was located.
“The ministry is satisfied that based on the report from the four-member panel which investigated the circumstances surrounding the baby of Pansy Campbell, that the baby died at the Mandeville Regional Hospital on September 1, 2002 at 12:40 pm,” the release said.
The ministry recently apologised to the couple for the emotional pain and anguish caused and has since said that it will be implementing new measures to deal with the death of patients, including proper tagging and identification procedures. The new measures were recommended by a four-member panel — headed by former senior medical officer at the Bustamante Hospital, Dr Barbara Johnson — to investigate the circumstances surrounding the whereabouts of Baby Pansy’s body.