The four-month-old baby who returned to Gaia hospital on Thursday late afternoon, after being delivered to GNR dos Carvalhos, is already in an institution, a hospital source revealed to Lusa today.
The source indicated that the process of handing over the baby to an institution took place between 8pm and 10pm on Thursday.
The four-month-old child was removed by his mother from the Pediatrics ward at the Gaia hospital on Wednesday, bypassing security measures, and the Gaia/Espinho Local Health Unit (ULSGE) opened an internal investigation.
The mother took her daughter from the hospital in the afternoon, “after being informed by the court, during the morning, that the child would be handed over to a foster family” during the day on Wednesday, said the same source.
The case was advanced by Jornal de Notícias (JN), which stated that the hospital reported the baby’s disappearance to the PSP and the court.
The president of the Board of Directors of the Local Health Unit (ULS) of Gaia/Espinho, Luís Matos, said on Thursday that he was “evaluating everything that happened” in the case of the mother who removed the baby from hospitalization.
“We are going to evaluate everything, we are going to evaluate the bracelet system, we are going to evaluate how it was possible for it to have been removed and we are going to carry out as many tests as we can”, Luís Matos assured journalists.
The electronic bracelet was found intact in the trash can in the bathroom of the room where the child was hospitalized.
“We have to learn from here so that this doesn’t happen again, this can’t happen again, we won’t let this happen again and, therefore, we’re going to take all the lessons from here”, he said.
Luís Matos insisted that the hospital, in the Porto district, is evaluating everything that happened and how the mother managed to remove the baby’s bracelet.
On Thursday, the GNR said that the baby was delivered late in the afternoon at Posto dos Carvalhos, in Vila Nova de Gaia, adding that the child went to the hospital to be evaluated.
Lusa questioned the General Inspectorate of Health Activities about opening an investigation into this case and is awaiting a response.