An investigation has been launched into the recent death of Wakenaam resident Jasoda Lloyd, who succumbed one week after having delivered a stillbirth baby, Minister of Health Dr Leslie Ramsammy has said.
Speaking with Stabroek News yesterday, Ramsammy stated that an investigation is currently ongoing into the death of the 26-year-old woman and the results will be known in seven days time. The minister also divulged that more staff is being added to the medical team in Wakenaam and another doctor has already been dispatched, following calls by the residents for a relief nurse/midwife on the island.
In a telephone interview last night, Lloyd’s husband, Deo Kumar, recounted the events leading up to his wife’s death. Kumar said since marrying in November last year, he and Lloyd lived at their 82 Free and Easy, Wakenaam home, where their first child was conceived. During the woman’s pregnancy, Kumar recalled, he frequently escorted her to Maria’s Pleasure Health Centre for regular checkups on the foetus.
As time went by, the health worker there recommended they make a trip to the Woodlands Hospital to do an ultrasound and overall check-up to ensure that all was well. This was done on July 25 and when they returned the Woodlands report to the health centre two days later, they were told that “everything normal.”
On that same night, July 27, Kumar recalled he and his wife rubbing her growing stomach and feeling the baby’s movement, after which they went to sleep. However, sometime between 11pm and midnight, Lloyd awoke and went to the washroom and subsequently started to cough. Kumar said he offered her some water to drink. She soon vomited and began heaving afterwards. He suggested she lie down, but she reported having problems breathing when she did, and he took her outside to sit on the settee.
Sensing that things were more serious than they seemed, Kumar said he decided to take his wife to the hospital, so he headed downstairs to place a phone call to his brother, who lives about seven houses away, to assist in carrying her. As he ran down the stairs, the man said he heard “something fall down,” so he headed back upstairs and found his wife on the ground, experiencing a seizure. Kumar related that this was the first time his wife ever had a seizure.
As his wife’s body convulsed, Kumar said he called out to his neighbours, who promptly showed up and assisted. Not knowing what else to do, the man said he put on the fan to cool his wife, and went to get his brother, who came right away, and with the help of the neighbours they were able to transport the now unconscious woman to the Wakenaam Cottage Hospital. The distraught husband recounted that at the hospital there was only one nurse and a medic on duty at the time, and the latter informed him that “he can’t handle the situation” and advised them to rush her to the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH). The medic, wearing only his pajamas, then proceeded to escort them in the speedboat to the Parika landing, where an ambulance he had requested was awaiting them, and they were quickly transported to the GPH, where Lloyd was admitted right away.
About half hour following his wife’s admission, Kumar stated that a nurse came and told him that they would have to “take the baby from her to save her life,” to which he agreed. Following the operation to remove the eight-month-old foetus, Lloyd was placed in the Intensive Care Unit, where she remained until her demise, seven days after.
“My wife never spoke another word to me, she never opened back her eyes, she never held my hand,” Kumar lamented. He said he asked the doctors what went wrong with his wife and he was told that when they conducted the operation, it was found that the baby was separated from the afterbirth and suffocated as a result. This, Kumar said the doctors told him, stopped Lloyd’s kidneys from functioning. Kumar said he was informed on the following morning that his wife had succumbed at around 10pm.
Denied
Kumar was also denied the chance of seeing his wife for the last time before her interment, owing to a dispute between him and Lloyd’s family. He said it was brought on by the “parlour people.” Things went so far that Kumar said he was threatened by his father-in-law as well as the overseer of the parlour.
“After I hear that my wife died, the next day I went and started building the tomb…I bought the dress for her and made all the arrangements, then this father came and said that he will take care of everything,” he said.
On the day of the funeral, the widower stated that he and his family were denied entry into the Pouderoyen parlour to view and assist with the preparations of his wife and only child, by the woman responsible for the parlour, who informed them that after the dead had been dressed they would be able to see them.
However, after the preparations had been made, the bodies were quickly placed in the caskets and into the hearse, “then they call we. When we was going to see the body the hearse pass us.”
At the couple’s home friends, neighbours and family from “all over the country” had gathered for a funeral, which had been announced on television. The man said that everything that he had invested in for his wife’s funeral in Wakenaam is still there and he hasn’t a clue what to do with them.
A post-mortem examination was performed on Lloyd’s body, but Kumar said he hasn’t yet been down to Georgetown to uplift the report.
