Dead is Charran ‘Ajai’ Dhanai, 15, of Lot 117 Grant 1805 Crabwood Creek, Corentyne. Chief Executive Officer of the Berbice Regional Health Authority, Dr Vishwa Mahadeo, said on Friday that he “heard” about the story and an autopsy has since been ordered.
Dhanai was admitted to the hospital on Monday afternoon after complaining of feeling ill as a result of a high fever. The boy’s grieving mother, Savitrie Looknauth, said that after her son was admitted, the nurses tested his blood pressure “and them tell me I can go home and bring back stuff for him.” She said that Dhanai could not stand when she left him “because he was getting swinging and seeing dark.” Looknauth said that she returned later that evening “and them put saline on him and put him on a bed and I set his netting, covered him, closed the hospital windows and left.”
The woman told Stabroek News that her son’s condition improved on Tuesday. However, when she visited him in the afternoon, Dhanai’s condition had changed “and then he started to tremble hard, hard and I covered him with a sheet and a towel.” Looknauth recounted telling the nurses that her son had a high fever and asking them to check him. “They tested his temperature and never to come back to say anything,” she said. “Then me son coughed and spitted and brought up some blood and I became frightened and go back to the nurses and called them.”
Looknauth said that a doctor administered an injection and she was asked to leave the room. “Me see them take out the saline from his hand and put in a syringe and left it in his left hand and then they gave him another injection on his other hand,” she said.
Subsequently, Dhanai asked her for some water which she gave and he said that his eyes felt as though they were closing, the mother said. “My son claimed that before they gave him the two injections, they had already given him one before so that totals to three injections,” she added.
Later that evening, just after 11pm, Looknauth received a call from the hospital informing her that the boy had died.
She stated that she saw two doctors as well as the nurses enter the ward and one of the doctors came out about 20 minutes later and, “she took a little time to talk and she mouth was trembling and she said that she was very sorry and that she tried her best but my son passed away and me started to cry.” Looknauth said that she sent her husband into the ward and when he went in, “is sheer blood, blood, all over the whole bed, pillow, everything full of blood.”
According to her, other patients’ accounts indicate that “my son was groaning for a good time and started to vomit and then one of the patients called for the nurse and then the doctor (who was downstairs)… I don’t know if he been gone to sleep or where he went and when he came upstairs, he said my son bled for 15 minutes and bled very bad.”
Looknauth said that to date, no explanation has been given for her son’s sudden demise nor has a cause of death been determined. No post- mortem examination has been performed since the hospital authorities told the family that the body will have to be taken to New Amsterdam and the family will have to shoulder the costs to transfer the body to the town, she said.
Dhanai’s uncle who said he spoke briefly with the doctor who tended the teen related to this newspaper “that he (the doctor) said he really can’t say what the cause of death was but he (Dhanai) bleed profusely from his nose for 10-15 minutes.”
Looknauth wants answers and said that she believes that the injections, which were administered at very short intervals, had something to do with her son’s death. Relatives are also wondering whether Dhanai’s blood pressure had skyrocketed “and he blood vessels burst.”
“If my son go with fever, he cannot dead and bleed through his nose… something gotta wrong with him, and we want to know what wrong with him and what caused his death,” Looknauth said. She stated that she never asked the doctors what the three injections were for but was told by one that he gave the boy three different doses of antibiotic injections and six bags of saline “and that he very sorry and that if my son was anywhere in this world, whether Georgetown (Hospital) or wherever, he, my son, would have still died… that it had to happen; the doctor told me that.”
The family is also questioning why they have to incur costs to take Dhanai’s body to New Amsterdam for the autopsy.
A medical source said that bleeding profusely through the nostrils suggested that the child was haemorrhaging in the brain.
