St. Maart: No final journey home for dead baby

PHILIPSBURG-A dead baby from St. Maarten has been in the Curaçao hospital's morgue for more than a month and can't be flown home for financial reasons.

The baby was born in St. Maarten Medical Center (SMMC) more than a month ago with a serious birth defect. Local paediatrician Dr. Pieter Offringa decided to send the baby by air ambulance to St. Elisabeth Hospital in Curaçao, where it died a day later.

The father of the baby, who is from a nearby English-speaking island, as is the mother, is insured at the Social Insurance Bank SVB. The SVB apparently paid for transport of the baby to Curaçao and the hospital.

However, an SVB spokesperson in Curaçao told the Amigoe newspaper, which published the story in its Thursday edition, that flying corpses home was not its responsibility.