The news reads like one straight out of the movies. In what was a heart-rending tale, a woman hailing from the Phillipines, Grace Alexandria (40), developed labour pains while on board a Dubai-Manila flight when it entered Indian airspace about a week ago, and delivered a baby girl while still on the plane.
The pregnant woman was on her way to Manila where her parents lived, where she wanted to deliver the baby. Considering the emergency, the Emirates flight had to land at Shamshabad, where doctors of the Apollo Clinic examined the mother and baby, and finding the little one to be very frail, admitted her to the main Apollo Hospitals in Jubilee Hills.
The best of efforts were in vain, and the baby girl breathed her last three days ago.
The woes of Ms. Grace, a nurse working in Dubai, did not end there. On account of a few issues that cropped up with the Church here, she was initially forbidden from performing the last rites of the baby in Hyderabad. However, as news went out a few families offered help. The Tourism Department of Telangana too chipped in.
Secretary-Tourism B. Venkatesam visited the hospital on Monday morning and offered help to the Filipino woman. He promised her that Telangana government would foot the hospital bill, after a discount was allowed on humanitarian grounds. He also said that the government would make arrangements for her flight to Manila too late on Tuesday evening.
The Tourism Department is said to have sorted out the issue pertaining to the last rites of the baby girl, and the little one is to be laid to rest at the Trimulgherry cemetery. Necessary orders have been passed on to the concerned police too, Mr. Venkatesam said.
Speaking to The Hindu late on Monday evening, the senior officer said, “It is our bounden duty to take care of our guests regardless of whether the visitor is on a scheduled trip or an unscheduled one, and it becomes all the more important when the guest is in distress.”
